


The Fire that Swallowed the World

by RowlettLesbian



Series: Harriet the Flame [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Abusive Dursley Family (Harry Potter), Book 1: Complete!, Book 1: Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, Book 2: Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets in Progress, Care of Magical Creatures, Child Abuse, Child Death, Creature Harry Potter, Eventual Happy Ending, F/F, Fairy Tale Elements, Falling In Love, Female Harry Potter, Femslash, Fluff and Humor, Gen, Good Slytherins, Harry Potter is a Horcrux, Humor, Lesbian Character, Mild Gore, Minor Violence, Monsters, Mythical Beings & Creatures, Other, Ravenclaw Harry Potter, Romance, Slow Burn, Smart Harry Potter, Suicidal Thoughts, Work In Progress
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-29
Updated: 2019-05-16
Packaged: 2019-07-04 03:14:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 25
Words: 72,141
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15832620
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RowlettLesbian/pseuds/RowlettLesbian
Summary: Harriet Potter died at one year old. What was left of her slogged through life, alive in body and mind but not soul. Six years later she was finally cremated.This is not the story of Harriet Potter. This is the story of the brilliant flame who inherited her place, and her journey in the strange world of humans.*****Harriet is trapped, surrounded by humans, and painfully easy to extinguish if she doesn't keep her flames hidden. After the Dursleys, Hogwarts is a step up for her, but now she has to unravel the mysteries surrounding the body she stole and fight to survive against a monster who may be even less human than she is.One by one, Harriet's friends will find that they are playing with fire, and the price of failure is greater than they ever could have known.





	1. The Shell

**Author's Note:**

> This is for you: the little girl I was ten years ago. You are magical, you funky little lesbian. I wish I'd had something like this when I was you.
> 
> Note: Some update notifications will be for Hermione POV chapters posted throughout the early story, so don't panic if you can't find the newest chapter right away!

Harriet watched Aunt Petunia’s thin hand shake against the tap as the woman turned the water up as hot as it would go. The stream of water against the metal basin beneath the faucet was a monotone rumble, similar to the internal voice of the shell. With the water now running, Petunia called the thing known as Harriet forward, using that main name the shell knew to abide by. It didn't know much, but it did know from years of functionality that obedience generally took less effort. Motivation was not something it had a lot of, but perpetuating its own existence was ingrained somewhere deep in its non-thoughts. Aunt Petunia gestured impatiently at the steaming stream of water. The water was so hot that it sizzled and bubbled when it fell against the drain. 

“Wash your hands,” said Aunt Petunia. And so, the thing called Harriet stuck its hands into the flow of water and started to scrub. The skin went bright red immediately. Maybe, if it was alive, it would be screaming now. 

“Ffffreak.” Harriet almost failed to hear Aunt Petunia’s hiss over the sizzling noise coming from the sink. Aunt Petunia’s eyes never once wavered from Harriet’s face as she reached over and slowly turned off the faucet. 

Aunt Petunia stood to her full height and grabbed Harriet’s shoulder. It moved jerkily as Aunt Petunia shoved it into the living room and pushed a single flat shoe into it’s calf so that fell it onto the perfectly white rug in front of the fire place. Harriet stayed on its skinless hands and scraped knees, looking down at the floor for a moment. There were blood stains on the rug, now. It turned to face upwards towards Aunt Petunia, as it needed further directions. 

Aunt Petunia looked down on it from her great height and Harriet could almost make out that Aunt Petunia was communicating something. Her eyes were…dark? Or maybe it was the way her teeth were showing but her lips weren’t smiling, like Aunt Marge’s dog, Ripper. Harriet could with near certainty say that Aunt Petunia was not happy. 

“Build…a…fire…witch.”

Harriet looked to the fire place. It was big, meant for a fancy display of fake electric flames trapped in glass. Where they had been was now a pile of ashes. Harriet looked at the cardboard box of wood next to the fireplace. Last year, Harriet had watched and it remembered how Uncle Vernon had built a fire. It began mimicking his actions from that evening. It took one log at a time to place in the hearth, with some room under and between them. 

Each piece of wood that the shell placed in the old ash was stained with its blood. Seven pieces of wood, a nest of tinder, and now it remembered it was time for a light.

The muscles in Harriet’s arm twitched involuntarily when it flicked the lighter, over and over trying to get tiny blood-slick fingers to light the spark when both hands were shaking. Its fingers stilled when, just before it could roll the lighter again a tiny flame flickered from the air just above the filthy plastic. It was a split second too late to be a product of the lighter, even if it was in the right place. As it drew the spark to the wood, the tiny flame seemed hesitate before rushing to catch up with its hand. The fire starter lit easily. In the fake hearth, the flame grew steadily over the first few twigs from which it would grow; the product of a fake child. 

The corpse of a little girl, growing when it should be ash, used stolen fingers full with blood and splinters to take one stick at a time. It meticulously placed each twig in a spiral around some imaginary center in the forgotten coals. The body, not once warm for six years, was finally burning, indifferent to the warmth and life within the hearth that charred what remained of the skin on its arms and hands. Harriet knew, in some deep part within it, that this mortal flame could not burn it, the thing inside the body, so easily. When the last log was placed Harriet remained kneeling on knobby knees, staring into the coals with dark, blank eyes set unmoving beneath a scar that contorted and flashed as the flames leapt into the air and vanished. 

And as the flame crackled with the fiercest heat this not-being would ever know, Aunt Petunia pushed the body of her dead niece into the fire.

 

The fire was all that existed. Harriet could feel it in its eyes and nose, bursting through its hair.  
The fire was inside it.  
It was inside it inside the body the only body it had it was being s w a l l o w e d b y f l a m e it felt scared it f e l t  
The fire burned within her.

 

Harriet awoke sleeping in a pile of ash.

Nothing was the same.

She wasn’t just a chunk of flesh anymore, she had something alive within her. She wasn’t used to anything, and now she was something and it was different than being nothing. Existing really was very...strange.

For one, she was pretty sure she was feeling something. For another, she was certain that she was thinking something. Stranger than any thoughts or feelings, though, was that she, as in Harriet, was having them.

She had a name. She knew her own name. She’d never known something like that before.

Then her fingers grasped a handful of feathery ash. Against her fingertips - fingertips! - the ashes crumbled and spread over her skin and left her with a sensation of overwhelming softness. Of warmth.

And as Harriet felt and learned the soft and dry warmth of ash, she, too, warmed up inside. The living thing inside her caught onto the richness of the idea of ash and grew, and Harriet felt each of her limbs twitch with an instinctual ability she now had, an inherent strength, to get up and move.

A tiny muscle at the corner of her mouth pulled upwards.

So Harriet took a deep breath -more air to burn!- and opened her eyes for the first time for the third time in her existence.


	2. The Fire

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There's a new Sheriff in town and she's PISSED

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last chapter was meant to be freaky, but it's all going to get better from here. This is the last chapter before Hogwarts, and I've already written the next two. I'm planning to post them probably next week as I finish a few more.

Harriet grabbed Aunt Petunia’s brush and impatiently charred away the bleached brittle hairs stuck in it. It had taken her four brushes and five screaming fits from Aunt Petunia to get the hang of sending the sparks up each hair but not each bristle. Harriet could only assume she got away with it these days because Aunt Petunia could only scream about so many things before her thin neck closed up. Harriet grinned into the mirror as she grabbed two hunks of smoldering hair and starting wrestling half into a puffy braid over one shoulder. It was the only way to keep it from fluffing out and glowing with embers throughout her day. The second braid went in much more easily as Harriet beamed at her reflection. She loved everything about her hair! It looked like soot spun into rope thick as the ship ties she’d burned away on distant, now gone, docks and harbors. Coal black bangs curled around her eyes like leaves flinching away from flame. And over her eyes was a mark shaped just like the lightning that lit her, back when she first began to burn. 

Harriet had been blazing bright inside this human skin for nearly four years, and now stood in the shape of a slightly taller prepubescent girl. Harriet leaned in close to the mirror and yanked one lower eyelid down as far as it would go without ripping. Behind all of the sticky wet blood and pink innards Harriet could see the flicker of light that resided within her, a force that could ‘live’ without succumbing to all of the humiliating inadequacies of being alive. Her eyelid slid back into place.

Humans loved controlling fire, she knew that. So, Harriet made sure to wear long fluffy bangs over her scar, keep her flames tucked away inside, and bind her hair back into braids. Harriet needed to look into the mirror and see a normal ten year old girl looking back. It was somewhat disturbing, sharing a visage with the living humans she had near nothing in common with, but Harriet burned quite hot enough to seethe in fury over looking human and, at the same time, love every moment in her capable body.

Reflected in the mirror behind her the bathroom window was open, letting in the noises of hundreds of humans all in white houses with flat green lawns. Harriet turned and threw the hairbrush as hard as she could at the neighbor’s house. Because she could. And it made her laugh. As she giggled, Harriet brought a tiny, twig-like finger up to window glass and tapped quietly. As she was, any one of those humans could snap her open, but the world was much too interesting to avoid in fear of a single possible outcome. She was still a fire, and so fear was both beneath and beyond her, but thinking and feeling were worth these similar indignities. Indignities, Harriet glowered at the rattling door, like the Dursleys.

Dudley was howling something about needing to go. Harriet made sure to slam the window shut before she left so that Dudley would have to sit in the smell of his own putrid waste while he brushed his teeth. She kicked the door open and narrowly missed Dudley’s nose as he scrambled past her. He avoided touching her as he rushed inside. Harriet smirked. She had him well trained.

Harriet marched down the stairs to the kitchen with twin pigtails swinging behind her. Dursleys or not, today was going to be amazing! She was going to eat scraps out of the frying pan before they were done cooking, she was going to walk outside in the sun in her ash-grey dress, and she was going to set fire to the pants of any human that got in her way. And once she was done, she was going back to the library. 

The Dursley kitchen was white and plastic and steel. Harriet hated every last bit of it. Burning plastic smelt horrible, and once she ate a steel spoon and was coughing up lumps of molten metal for weeks. Some sunlight came in to illuminate the breakfast table but Petunia filtered it through weird lacey white curtains. Harriet assumed it was so the glint off of Vernon’s balding head wasn’t so harsh. As it was, Harriet quickly shielded her eyes with one hand to block the greasy glare. Vernon was slowly turning purple behind the daily newspaper. Petunia was standing at the stove burning breakfast with a phone jammed against her ear. Above the stove were the perfect windows to peer out from into the neighbor’s yard.

“No, no Wendy, it was that damned girl again…. Yes, with MY hairbrush! Ungrateful little tramp, she’ll end up just like- yes, just like that slut on the news, Wendy! You know, I think…”

Harriet scowled. She was more grateful than any living thing she had ever met! Harriet returned every single piece of wood she ever burned as heat and smoke and light in perfectly equal measure to how much she had eaten. More, she never burned the Dursleys until they got too close. That is the fair exchange for the cupboard under the stairs.

Harriet grinned and rocked up onto her ratty-sneaker-clad toes. Silently, she took a huge leap and landed directly behind Aunt Petunia with a harsh bang against the previously pristine linoleum. She even managed to stick the dismount. Petunia threw the phone straight up at the ceiling as she wailed like a cat in heat. Harriet beamed at her mastery over human athleticism. Petunia cursed a streak in the air so foul that Uncle Vernon actually put down his paper. Harriet took the opportunity to grab some bacon from the sizzling oil. Petunia swung her spatula at Harriet’s head. She, like Harriet, froze midway through the motion. Harriet had whipped her head upwards and bared her teeth, which barely concealed the fire she was holding back from spitting. Petunia used to swing the whole frying pan, but she seemed to have learned after one too many breakfasts had ended up on the floor. Or after her dress had ‘mysteriously’ caught on fire. Twice. Aunt Petunia hated her around a quarter as much as she hated Aunt Petunia, being as Harriet’s hatred was literally burning, but Petunia feared her more than Harriet had ever feared anything, and Harriet could see that hate and fear in her Aunt’s gaze as the wretched human glared down at her. Petunia lowered the spatula with unwavering ice cold eyes and slowly put it on the counter before bending to pick up the phone. The dial tone was ringing, so Wendy Whatever may not have heard Petunia’s morning greeting. Harriet grimaced out the windows, avoiding the sight of her silent family. Humans were petty and bitter, and Harriet hated them. People, even the Dursleys for all they blew hot air and smoke, were cold inside. 

Harriet crossed her arms and turned to the table where Vernon was eating. Normally Harriet didn’t interact with the Dursleys, even for food. Today, though, she needed people. Harriet could only avoid them for so long before it was like the whole world was running out of air. She hated it. It was the worst sort of trap, but fires need fuel. And the Dursleys were all she had. 

Still, she was better than any human, and she wouldn’t give them anything more than this. Harriet kicked an empty chair as hard as possible on her way out of the kitchen and flipped her braids behind her as she turned down the hall without looking back.

Harriet walked out into the sunlight munching on her smoking bacon. She left to no protests, which was just fantastic because she would have ignored them anyways. She slammed the door against the faintest whisper of “good riddance”. Harriet was so angry she could melt the sidewalk, and so she smiled as wide as she could and threw her arms out to catch the sunlight on her twiggy bare arms. She was a core of flame, and she would not be snuffed out by those…those…them! Fire cannot be contained, and someday she would burn everything she’d ever known here into rich, warm ash.

Except the library. Harriet had made good time today, based on the sun it had only been less than an hour and she had reached her goal. The building before her was as ugly as ever. The library in Surrey was a concrete block with grimy windows. Harriet figured that’s why they allowed her inside. She passed her card over the turnstile and hustled past the old librarian snoring behind the front desk. As soon as she was within the shadows of the shelves her shoulders untensed and her breath slowed. 

Harriet burned through books, but never ever literally. Books held the best sort of fuel for the strange flames within her. As a common flame she never could have known. Books were like lightning.

Harriet shoved her face into a bookshelf and inhaled as hard as possible for as long as possible. She could only reach the third shelf up. Harriet had a hard time deciding what to read, given the sheer volume of choices. Sometimes one book led to another based on curiosity or proximity, but even then books weren’t usually written or stored based on rules Harriet understood. For example, Harriet could easily find books on snakes, and books on languages, but she’d yet to find any books on the both combined. Instead, she’d find books on strange things like why girls shouldn’t rebel or how to avoid Satanism. Nowadays if Harriet couldn’t decide on a topic to look for she followed her nose. Human smelling was perfect for finding fuel, be it wood, pizza, or ancient paper. She sniffed down the row systematically, occasionally moving diagonally as one book or the other enticed her. Today she settled on the dusty, smoky smell of a book about Marine Mammals of the North American Pacific Coast. She grabbed the books on either side of it, as books tended in Harriet’s experience to have at least one thing in common with the book next to them. Only sometimes. Once she read a book about a box that moved one way and then another when you pushed it and the book right next to it was about stars and planets spinning around each other.

Harriet tucked herself into a random nook between shelves and settled in for a wonderful day discovering this strange, magical world she now lived in.


	3. The Witch

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harriet makes her first friend, her first enemy, and her first promise. Oh, also she gets a letter.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Harriet is really hard to write speaking with others. She's pretty defensive and isolated, and she's not going to like humans for a long time. I'm hoping this will start to make more sense once she's at school. Goodness knows I hated everyone in highschool, and they say write what you know.

Harriet was unbelievably pleased with this letter she’d been sent. It was properly addressed, for one thing. Harriet was very proud of her cupboard under the stairs. She’d filled it with the softest of ashes and the darkest of charred wood that she could find. She kept it meticulously dry and ate any spider that crawled inside. It helped her dresses to smell nice and kept her skin from getting covered in weird human fluids. For another thing, this letter said she’d be going to school in Scotland. The landscapes she’d read about sounded better than anything she’d ever seen or remembered seeing. She’d already written both comments in her reply. Now, in order to send her reply, Harriet faced a dilemma. She needed to figure out how to catch a bird. Even worse, her books said owls were nocturnal, and she’d never seen one before. This was going to take some planning. Harriet grabbed a braid in each hand and idly twirled them. Planning, time, and supplies.

Harriet rolled out of her cupboard and dusted off some stray ash. First things first, territory was essential to any plan. Harriet checked the living room for humans before twirling in so she could watch her dress spin while she moved. She tipsily stopped at the windows and opened the curtains. Outside laid her battlefield, which caused Harriet to pause.

There was an owl sitting on Uncle Vernon’s car. 

Well she assumed it was an owl. She’d seen pictures. 

Harriet inched out of sight of the window before she bolted for the front door. She opened it as carefully as she could stand and then stared at the owl that now stared right back at her from the sparkling navy car. It had ear tufts. Harriet would burn the world for this creature.

If owls could deliver mail, then they must be able to read the addresses. And if owls could read then they must understand words. Harriet lifted the note in her hand and proffered it while she made her request.

“Greetings, venerable raptor, please deliver this note for me in return for a dead shrew”. The owl immediately flew to Harriet and settled on her hastily raised forearm. It held out a single leg with a piece of twine on it. As Harriet tied the twine around her little note-tube, she wondered if she could find an albatross to deliver her someplace, like a feathery hot air balloon.

Harriet checked three pockets before she found the dead rodent from two days ago. Her new favorite living creature in the world swallowed it whole. This owl was officially better than every human she could think of. Harriet beamed with every tooth and whispered in its tiny fluffy pointed ear “I prefer to swallow my food whole as well.” The owl gently screeched in her face and bobbed up and down. Harriet let her eyes relax along with her smile and screeched back as closely to the sound as she could manage. Apparently, she was understandable; the owl carefully leaned in and rubbed their faces against each other. With one last little whistle the owl spread its wings and Harriet lifted her arm high. 

Harriet let her smile fade as the owl flew away with her note. She’d known the fellow predator for five minutes and she missed the owl already. And now she needed to go find a new dinner.

**************** 

On July 31st, Harriet awoke in her cupboard to someone knocking on the front door. She rolled over and shoved her face into a pile of ash. Now her glasses were digging into her face. A burst of air through her nose gave her just enough room to breath while still keeping her head buried. 

As the knocking continued Harriet shot a fist out against the cupboard door. She produced a low “donk” noise. Donks seemed like a good counter-beat to knocks. Harriet answered each knock she heard with a donk and grinned into her ashes as the rhythm began to change to accommodate her donks. It was like dancing with someone only with noise. 

The cupboard under the stairs was flooded with light as the door seemingly vanished in front of her. She threw a hand up over her eyes as quickly as possible, grunting and pushing against the back wall to launch herself out of the cupboard. Animals were easy to trap, Harriet knew, because they cornered themselves. A fire as smart as her knew that every open space was a chance to spread. Harriet tumbled into the hallway and collided with something rigid. But she knew she wasn’t anywhere near the opposite wall, so something must be in the hallway. Maybe it was a package or Uncle Vernon. She quickly straightened her glasses to check. Now, she could see that she was forehead to ankle with someone wearing a very long dress. 

Probably not Vernon. 

Harriet shot to her feet and started patting herself down, spreading ash as widely as possible as was her usual modus operandi. The strange ankles, it turned out, were attached to a human. A human who was now sneezing. 

“MS.POTTER. WHAT IN MERLIN’S NAME IS THE MEANING OF THIS?” Well then. Harriet did not wake up this morning just to deal with an older, louder Petunia. She let her flames flood her mouth and fingertips.

Harriet could admit, if only to herself, that it took a lot of effort not to immediately set the stranger on fire. Still, she had enough control to notice all the ways in which this woman really was terribly strange. She kept a stick in her hand like a spatula, but it didn’t look like it would hurt nearly as much to be hit with. And she’d done something to Harriet’s cupboard door. She shouldn’t be strong enough to do that, not without some sort of extra power. She broke the rules, somehow, even as she looked like any other human in Surrey. Harriet fought the urge to step closer. She was near ready to explode with questions now. The grip the woman had on the stick and the severe tightening of her mouth told Harriet to stay back and not bother talking. 

The odd woman ran the stick along her dress and every last scrap of ash pulled away like smoke. Then she breathed out her nose like the dragons in Harriet’s books and gestured impatiently at the front door, next to which the Dursleys were clutching each other and turning fun new colors. 

“Ms.Potter. I am Professor McGonagall. I am to accompany you to purchase your school supplies. I will not tolerate any more tomfoolery today, am I clear?” 

Harriet could find several problems with this statement. For one, this woman was apparently the Deputy Headmistress, according to her letter. Yet here she was to personally escort her? For another, she looked like she’d just licked up lemon juice from the floor. And for last, Harriet hadn’t a penny to her name. 

Frankly, though, Harriet could not give a single freaking toss.

This was the most interesting thing that had ever happened to her, and if her suspicions were correct then this woman had powers that made her slightly more like Harriet than most humans. Harriet wondered if she could talk to animals like her, or make fires, or run as fast as the breeze which carried her. Harriet was now extremely glad she’d left her braids in last night. She glanced at the Dursleys for a moment and noticed Petunia’s unusual shaking and the way her lip was bleeding from being bit. Petunia was looking directly at her. This seemed like a good time to leave, as quickly as possible. 

Harriet gave the Professor her most glowing smile, “Uh-huh!” After all, she could always just burn McGonagall into barbecue if things went wrong. 

**************** 

Honestly, Harriet didn’t speak to anyone in Diagon Alley until it was time to buy a wand. She's just ended her shopping by getting temporarily left alone at long last by the old lady in front of a building that looked more like a wood pile than a purposeful structure. Her grumpy guide had been muttering something about brandy as she walked away in the direction of the alley entrance. So, Harriet looked up at the rough wooden door and the tiny iron sign swinging above it. "Ollivander's" it said, along with some tiny text she couldn't catch from her angle of sight. When she reached out to shove the door open splinters popped into her palm. Her natural heat sucked them in and ate them away. A tiny bell chimed above her as she stepped inside. Harriet followed the noise with her eyes to a spot above her head. Rather than attaching to the door, a dented, unpolished bell was floating in midair just out of Harriet’s reach. Above the bell massive wooden rafters held up soot-blackened boards and cobwebs alike. The cobwebs trailed down mere feet to shelves so high that Harriet imagined a fall from the top would kill most humans. Everything was built of some variety of warm dark wood and garnished with thin dry paper, with dust drifting upwards like licks of flame. Harriet took deep, searching breaths of the shop air. Ollivander’s made Harriet want to curl up in the center and burn it all away into ashes in grand spirals around herself.

Walking forward on silent feet, Harriet reached for a shelf. It felt like she was surrounded by darkness and embers, a world full of darkness and cold just waiting for her to reach out and fill it with light. The endless night was hovering like fabric behind her flesh-grown eyes. She felt rather than saw a single fingertip brush against layers of ash-like dust. Then there was a hand on her wrist and a man pulling her away. Harriet jerked around and clenched her teeth down on a burst of heat. The man holding her arm was pure white, with bulging eyes and folds of perfectly dry skin. Harriet had never seen a person so flammable and she instinctively pulled her flames back down within her, quite reasonably worried her touch alone might harm him. The man let go and gently smiled at her. He didn't straighten up. It did not appear his spine maintained the capacity for unbending.

“Ah, Harriet," said the old man in an airy, warm voice. "I’d been wondering when you would arrive." The man shuffled back a step and pulled out a tape measure which circled her for a moment before darting back into the man's pocket like a lizard retreating beneath a rock. The man ignored it entirely and simply stared into her eyes with his own blank, white cataracts. "Here for a wand, yes? Somehow, I don’t think you need to hear about the wands that came before you…no, no you need something new. I’d thank you not to touch things idly in my shop. Wands here are changed by those who wield them just as you are changed by those who you meet.” 

As the old man shuffled to the shelf and began grabbing boxes, Harriet felt like her eyes were burning. It was strange, to think she’d never really had a conversation before. Most people just yelled at her. How was she meant to respond? He’d smiled and she appreciated that. His teeth were grey and yellow with cracked red gums, like ashes and embers. She regained his eye contact and carefully smiled back.

"Er," she began, an unintentional slip that reminded her of the sounds she made when crackling through a stick of wood, “What’s a wand, sir? Why am I getting one? What’s it for? Is it for Hogwarts? What is Hogwarts? What’s your name nice to meet you how’d you know my name…” she had to wheeze the last few words as her lungs ran out of air for speaking with. 

“Well, Harriet, a wand is one way a magical being might channel their magic into action." The old man had raised an eyebrow at her questions and begun putting his boxes back almost disgustedly, grabbing different ones in a pattern too confident to be random. "You will need one at Hogwarts. The magic there, while not all wand-waving, is often taught in the way of words and motions. As for your other queries, I know you as I know every child I have ever sold a wand to, and every wand I have ever sold, for I am Mr.Ollivander. I make every last one of these wands, for good or ill. My mother before me taught me, as her mother taught her. And so, now I am here.” Mr.Ollivander smiled first down to her, then up at her as he knelt down to the floor and put down his boxes. His knees creaked like an old tree's branches. Harriet blew a breath of hot air over his forehead and grinned when the old man's eyebrows ruffled. 

“I'm Harriet," she started. She liked the taste of her own name on her tongue. "You're the most wonderful human I've ever met, Mr.Ollivander, but I've only met, er, I think about six. I'm here because an owl invited me, and the more I discover of our world, well, the brighter I am. So, ah, if you provide me with a wand, I will give you protection from fire in return. That's fair through and through, mm hmm.”

Mr.Ollivander’s wrinkles were all pulling inwards from his smile, which was interesting, but more than that his eyes were sparkling. Harriet quickly reached forward and patted his shoulder. She really enjoyed seeing a human smile at her, speak to her, treat her with respect. It was so much closer to being treated like what she was, a flame worthy of respect and fear and joy from all creatures simply by virtue of being heat and light incarnate. Mr.Ollivander continued to warmly smile at her as he stood, creaking a little before he shuffled off into the stacks. He came back with one more stack of boxes, of which he took the top one and opened it to reveal a smooth wooden stick that called to Harriet like dry grasses.

"Best find you a wand, then," he said. "A tricky customer already, unable to be measured, but we'll find you the right wand. The wand chooses the witch, you know, yes the right wand will come to you with a bit of trying." Ollivander scrabbled carelessly through the first box to start handing her wands. Harriet took the first one offered over to her, and was more confused than anything when it burst into flame within her hand. She hadn't gotten any fuel from that, nor lost any setting it alight. She looked over at Mr.Ollivander, worried she’d be asked to pay for that one, but Mr.Ollivander simply looked delighted and hurriedly offered her three more.

There was a fine pile of ashes on her feet by the time she felt it. Mr.Ollivander handed her a very plain, compared to previous, wand in a light tone of wood, only polished to the barest degree, and roughly the length of her forearm. When it touched her fingertips, Harriet felt every spark within her rise upwards. Her wand was like the night sky. Within her hand was an ever subtle openness, begging for embers to grace the inviting cold and black. Her wand was like oxygen and a cold night on a dry felled tree. She was burning hot, yet not a single lick of flame tried to escape from her skin, instead flowing into the beckoning grasp of the midnight sky within her wand. Her wand felt like it was making her a promise.

Mr.Ollivander’s manic grin finally subsided into something less strained. He knelt back down in front of her. His eyes seemed more grey than white now, more affectionate than blank.

“Cedar and phoenix feather," he said softly. "A tempestuous combination, to say the least. Poisonous wood wrapped around an eternal flame. This wand always vexed me during its creation, you know. A thing like this, it is said, shouldn’t exist. And yet here we are.” Harriet gulped down magma attempting to rise. These words, as quiet and gentle as they were, felt like they were being burned into the inside of her ill-begotten flesh. “Cedar is not only poisonous, no, it is a much more complex wood than most would like to consider. Cedar is a wood which bends with heat, which protects all things that lie within it. A cedar container with no seams would hold the most brilliant of lights within it for one thousand years, where all things dark would be smothered. Your wand will not fail you, Harriet. It chose you.”

Harriet nodded, but she couldn’t look away from her wand. The light, yellowed-rough wood of cedar that fit so perfectly not with just her palm, but with what was inside of her palm.

Harriet would not know this for years, but once she left, back in his shop, Mr.Ollivander straightened slightly. He felt warm down to his bone for the first time in 30 years.


	4. The Firstie

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Well, at least she wore her uniform.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter ended up a bit longer than I expected. Also I'm trying very hard to introduce more characters to Harriet's world, but probably the main cast won't really be important until next chapter.

Uncle Vernon whistled most the way to King’s Cross. Harriet felt it was very self-centered of him to celebrate losing his slave as if she wasn’t the best thing to ever be in his house. He’d ditched her outside of a huge stream of people with a trunk bigger than she was, so now Harriet had to drag it behind her and put up with how it scraped against the pavement. The station was full of people rushing back and forth, seemingly oblivious to her burning annoyance. Everyone was yanking on luggage or children or both and swerved around her with enviable ease, ease attributable to their much longer limbs. One woman’s wristwatch passed right by Harriet’s nose and she caught a glimpse of the time. It was ten to eleven, and Harriet had no idea where to go. 

“Think, Harriet!” she berated herself. There had to be some way to tell magic from not. What did she know about magical humans? Well, she knew they liked owls…speaking of. Harriet whipped her head around as a rugby team’s worth of redheads hustled past her, loud and hurried as all the rest, yet unique in that one tall boy was carrying a cage with a very old, ruffled grey owl inside. Harriet rushed to follow them. Barely a minute passed before the group stopped in front of a red brick pillar. One side held the official signage for “9”, and the other for “10”. She grinned up at the auspicious direction. She had to be close to her goal, and the owl would guide her the rest of the way. Then, a crowd of adults walked out in front of her, blocking her view with fabric-swathed bellies and thighs. Once she could see the pillar again the gaggle of red heads was gone. 

Harriet was panicking. This was her only chance to be just a bit closer to leaving the Dursleys for good, she would not miss it. She’d burn down the station first. Harriet ran as best as she could with her luggage, so more like stumbled, really, until she hit the pillar where the owl had been. It looked like every other pillar, red brick and square and a tad dirty, especially near the bottom. She payed particular attention to the spot 3/4s of the way from the “9” sign to the “10” sign. There was no seam, no ridge, not even a smudge to differentiate it. Harriet huffed. Then, she frowned. Her breath had not bounced off of the brick to come back to her face. She sniffed a little deeper. There was air flowing from the pillar. Fresh, clean air. It didn’t move around it, like air would a solid object, rather it came directly from the pillar as though Harriet was standing before an open window. Harriet burned a bit brighter as she inhaled. It figured, thought Harriet ruefully, that human eyes would be so much less reliable than honest flame. Harriet closed her eyes and took a deep breath before following the source of her fuel.

When she opened her eyes, she was surrounded by blatantly magical children. Only a small scattering were wearing clothes like the Dursleys, and Harriet was pleased she’d worn her school uniform to the station. A brilliant crimson steam train like she’d only ever seen pictures of was to her immediate left. Each puff of smoke from the stack curled against the wind as though it was being forced away from the crowd on the platform. Owls and cats screeched from every direction as their cages were jostled. 

The owl and its massive group of redheads were next to the train loading their trunks. 

“Now Fred, George, you set a good example for your little brother! I don’t want to hear about any trouble,” called the largest female of the pride. 

“Alright mum. We’ll make sure-“ one identical ginger spoke for the other “-you won’t hear a thing!”

The train whistled and the older woman began frantically kissing all of the redheads around her, some more than once despite their apparent displeasure. Harriet figured it was time to go. She yanked her trunk aboard. The aisle was carpeted with a royal crimson shade, and on either side of her glass doors spanned down the train. Each door led to a booth of sorts, with two plush benches facing each other on either side of the window looking out on the world beyond. The compartments near her were full of older kids and she did not want company on this, her very first train ride. This was an experience to cherish consuming. 

She walked on, and peered through the windows as she did so. The students already aboard were chattering, showing each other shiny baubles and animals in small containers. Quite a few were hugging and smiling. Harriet wondered what that felt like. Near the end of the train she finally found an empty compartment. She couldn’t get her trunk up to the luggage rack so she shoved it against the outer wall, beneath the window, and pulled out a book before sitting down where she could prop her feet up on the trunk. Otherwise, her toes wouldn’t reach the floor. Her book, for the moment, satisfied her hunger and she didn’t look up as the train pulled out of the station and carried her away from everything she had ever known.   
*****

Harriet had abandoned her book around an hour ago. The window was much too captivating. She was standing up on her seat with the window as wide open as it would go so that she could feel the breeze on her face. The train was the coziest place she’d ever been, and the air outside was the cleanest she’d ever tasted. The sky was pure white from clouds full of sunlight and the grassy fields outside were dotted with groves of dark trees. Occasionally she’d see a tiny house in the distance with smoke curling into the air from an equally tiny chimney. Whenever such a house passed Harriet would stick one arm out of the train and wave, just in case the people inside could see her. Once or twice a twisty red leaf would fly in the window and she’d snatch it up to eat. 

Harriet nearly tipped off of her seat when the door behind her opened and interrupted her reverie. Standing there was the pale boy from the robe shop along with two very large man-children. 

“So it’s true. I heard Harry Potter was on the train. You’re her, then?”

Harriet growled. “My name is not Harry, it’s Harriet. There is no “Harry Potter”, on this train or otherwise.”

The pale boy began turning pink. His companions inflated slightly. 

“I see. Well, Potter, whatever your name is, I felt it best I introduce myself early. You wouldn’t want to be stuck with the wrong sort, now would you? The name is Malfoy, Draco Malfoy.”

The pale boy held out one hand flat. Harriet mimicked him. He frowned for a moment before grabbing her hand with his for a few moments. Once he was done with her hand he sat down across from her and the two large boys shut the door and joined him. 

“So, what house are you hoping for? I’ll be in Slytherin, of course. My whole family has been. Imagine being in Gryffindor, or Hufflepuff! I’d sooner go home. I suppose Ravenclaw wouldn’t be bad, though…”

“I don’t care,” said Harriet. The pale boy grimaced before smiling awkwardly. 

“Playing it close to the chest, eh Potter? I suppose you may be worth my time yet.” Harriet wondered why the boy assumed he was worth her time. She picked up her potions book and went back to reading. 

“A potions book? You know, I’ve been studying potions my whole life. The head of Slytherin House, Professor Snape, teaches potions. I’ve already brewed one myself, even.”

Harriet flipped the page. This was going to be a long train ride. 

*****  
Harriet managed to ignore the pale boy for most the rest of the train ride. By the time it was dark he was still talking and Harriet had finished her potions book. She put it away in her trunk and prepared to pull the whole thing out behind her. 

“Honestly, Potter, weren’t you listening? The house elves with deal with your trunk. Now come on!” The pale boy grabbed her sleeve and marched out of the compartment. She got free quickly, but followed the three boys anyways. Outside of the train the night sky was rippling around a series of candle lamps and tall humans with wands holding heatless lights at their tips. Harriet followed the pale boy over to a clump of children who were only slightly taller than her rather than gargantuan. Except for the man at the front, who was the largest man Harriet had ever seen. The group ended up next to a lake, which was also new to Harriet. She knew water wasn’t pleasant for fire but her human skin lent her a certain tolerance. And this lake was tempting enough to tolerate. It was perfectly smooth with stars beneath the surface like embers flickering within ashes. She felt like she could walk across it, or even dive in and walk in another world on the other side. The pale boy drew her down with him and his big children into a tiny wooden boat rippling the water. 

“It’s tradition for first years to take boats across the black lake. My father says it’s perfectly safe so long as you stay away from the giant oaf.” The boats slowly moved forward and the pale boy finally shut up as they turned a corner. 

Above them rose a pinnacle of flames sustained in burnt black stone. Towers were lit from base to bloom with flickering golden lights. Every last gem of fire was doubled in its reflection on the endless black lake. Harriet got the sense that the flames sheltered within had burned there for one thousand years. 

The trip towards the castle seemed to last a lifetime. No one moved or made a sound. Harriet could have been alone in the dark for all the care she felt for anything other than gazing upwards at the most magical fortress she could envision. Harriet could have stayed here forever, burning in symphony with the torches glimmering from the tower windows. 

The ride ended too quickly for Harriet. She was hustled along with the clump of children into Hogwarts Castle. Inside were torch lined stone walls and candles dripping puddles of wax off of chandeliers that, after so many years, looked more wax than metal. The old woman who’d brought her to Diagon now stood ahead of them. She was telling them something but Harriet was much more interested in the paintings to her right. The people on the canvas were waving to her. She smiled back. Paintings seemed like they’d be much easier to talk to than humans. Paintings like being looked at, and Harriet was excellent at staring at beautiful things for hours at a time. 

“Come on, Potter!” said the pale boy. The group was moving along through a set of old wood doors taller than the Dursley’s house. She followed and found herself in a ceiling-less room. The night sky shone down on lone candles floating high above five tables, four parallel to each other, and one across the chamber from her. The four closest also seemed the fullest. They looked color-coded for some reason. Old Diagon Lady came to stand on the platform where the fifth table was next to a stool with a brown hat on it. She cleared her throat.

“Abbott, Hannah!” A single girl walked up to the stool and sat down. Was Harriet supposed to stand there while every child did this? She hummed softly and stared up at the not-ceiling. 

Harriet ignored everything but the candles as one by one the children around her were called forward. After what felt like hours the pale boy walked away, and a few minutes later Harriet finally heard something new. 

“Potter, Harriet!” Harriet walked up to the front of the hall. The children seemed just as bored as her, suddenly. They’d all started whispering. She would try and make this as quick as possible so that she could leave. Old Diagon Lady stared her down as Harriet climbed up onto the stool and faced out into the hall. She wondered who the man with tons of white hair sitting behind her was. 

And as Harriet took one last look at the largest number of people she’d ever seen the hat fell over her eyes. 

“Well you’re certainly different.”

Harriet flinched and gripped the stool. Her throat bobbed in preparation.

“Steady, no need to go breathing fire! Weren’t you listening to- of course you weren’t. I suppose it’s a bit much to expect an eleven year old to pay attention. Now please, be calm. I’m nothing but a hat, just as you are a flame, and I am only here to sort you. “

Harriet wondered if she wasn’t so unusual as she thought, given how many objects with voices she’d met today. It seemed Hogwarts was full of things that pretended to be alive, albeit not as well as she did. 

“Now, you’ve a good grasp on yourself, despite your real age. You are very determined, yes, and cunning, but more than that you burn inside. Not sparks of courage, or flames of ambition. You consume everything, don’t you? Yes, you still have much to learn. I think you’d be best in-

RAVENCLAW”

The horde of students was revealed to her again and Harriet stumbled off the stool as the noise in the hall increased. The mean old witch who’d picked her up nudged her towards the nearest table. It was very…blue. Just like Harriet’s tie, now, apparently. Harriet looked along the table and sat at the closest open seat she could find, ignoring the very tall boys and girls near her. The hall quieted down and Harriet let her shoulders fall a tad. Then they all started screaming again all at once and Harriet hurriedly covered her ears with her hands. Peering about she saw a single man staring at her. He had shiny coal eyes and hair, along with a slight frown and scrunched up eyebrows. One raised up higher the longer they stared at each other. He reminded Harriet of Petunia. Cold eyes. 

Harriet glanced to the right of the dark man as movement caught her eye. A man with purple cloth all around his head was sipping from his goblet. Harriet hissed like her owl friend as she suddenly felt like her insides were going to become her outsides. It was like the feeling of touching the back of her throat but worse. Her flames blazed as high as possible all in an instant and Harriet furiously swallowed. She opened eyes she hadn’t realized closed to the sight of the table and her hands planted upon it. She felt fine again, but she was not going to go near the purple human. She did not like him one bit, and did not want to know what puking would feel like for a creature full of molten flame. 

Harriet sat back up as the noise in the hall balanced out. At some point food had been placed on the table. Harriet wished she knew who made it. It seemed like all the humans were eating, though, and she was hardly going to let all the food go to these greedy animals. She quickly grabbed a platter no one was touching. It smelled like meat and looked like tea-colored jell-o. She tipped the whole thing over onto her plate and started eating it as quickly as possible. It jiggled. Chewing seemed pointless. Whatever it was it disintegrated quickly in her mouth. Harriet was thrilled, though, because it was so oily it burned like a grease fire. The very tall human next to her leaned towards her and Harriet yanked her plate closer and glowered. Glancing down the table she realized most of the children near her were hanging their mouths open and scrunching their noses as they stared at HER food. She took her next bite as slowly and obviously as possible, glaring down the table. As students turned away, looking green, Harriet smirked and went back to eating normally. Eating was much better when she knew no one would dare to steal her food.


	5. The Student

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harriet settles in to her new home for all of five minutes. More enemies, more frenemies, and the beginnings of a mystery. Harriet is burning with curiosity! And rage. 
> 
> At least the food at Hogwarts is good.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wooooow this went way longer than I wanted. I'm finally at the point, though, where I can get started on some fun plot things. Next chapter should have more Hermione and Malfoy, and even a bit of Ron!

Ravenclaw Tower was alright. The blue and brown room was full of soft pillows and library books next to a warm little fire in a bronze hearth. She could easily see herself reading in there someday once she knew how to make books fireproof. As a downside, older students were hovering around in little unapproachable groups. As an upside, windows taller than Harriet circled the tower letting in light from the stars. Several students were climbing one or the other of two staircases that spiraled up to separate hallways, each with seven doors. While the staircases were marble, the rest of the common room was much more plush. The carpet Harriet was standing on was actually bouncy beneath her shoes, and she rocked back and forth to enjoy the cushioning. Harriet only stilled when one of the taller humans marched up to the children and, thus, Harriet.

“First year girls, please follow me,” said the taller human, “I will be taking you to your dormitory. The boys cannot enter. Please try to get along, because you’ll be living together until you graduate.” Harriet and five girls followed the taller girl up the bronze-grey stone staircase to the right. At the end of the hallway was a dark wood door labeled “1” set deep into the stone. The taller girl opened the door and then left them alone with only the instruction to be at breakfast by 7:30. The five girls chattered at each other and filed into room number 1. 

Harriet was the last to slowly enter the dormitory. Room number 1, she found, appeared perfectly circular although she’d need to measure to be sure of just how imperfect it truly was. Every surface and furnishing was built from a deep, dark wood that shone with lacquer, adding to both Harriet's comfort and her hunger. Harriet’s trunk was in front of a bed that was one away from the door going clockwise. That was probably her bed, then. The other girls were still chattering to each other as they each found their own trunks and began to settle onto the beds associated, supporting Harriet's hypothesis.

Harriet had no idea how they could understand each other while they were all talking at once. She could barely comprehend snippets of their speech. One called herself Lisa, and another Mandy. One girl called herself Faucet or something like that. Su Li was in the bed next to Harriet’s. She was already covering her walls with posters of horses. Padma Patil, which reminded Harriet of petals, was on the other side of Harriet, next to the door and kept pouting down at her bed, seeming disappointed about something. Their beds all curved around the outer wall of their circular room, so each girl would sleep with a window above their head. 

Keeping her distance from the girls, Harriet slowly made her way to her trunk and looked over her new space with a critical eye. The bed made her want to set the blanket on fire and keep it on fire for the next seven years. It was a fluffy, navy thing covering greyish blue sheets, and everything was stitched with shiny bronze thread. The bed was built like a house, with a pillar at each corner holding up floor-to-ceiling curtains. It wasn’t her cupboard, but it was bigger, softer, and private enough. And it had a window. She adored it at first sight. 

Harriet jumped up and crawled over her new bed to reach her extremely delightful window, making sure to wipe her feet at the end of the blanket so that her shoes wouldn’t track mud all over it. She ran a finger around the seam of the window to find the lock and then popped it as far open as it would go. The gap wasn’t big enough to fit through, but night air flowed easily this high above the ground. Harriet smiled out into the cold, damp night from the comfort of her new space. The Dursleys could not touch her here. She would make this place her own. 

“Honestly Harry, it’s already freezing in here,” said Mandy from behind her. Harriet scowled, deeply offended yet again. She’d just been musing about how happy she was, and now some twit was interrupting her to complain about temperature? Humans generated heat just like Harriet, yet they always ended up grumbling about it anyways. It was one of Harriet’s biggest pet peeves. Alongside people getting her name wrong.

Harriet whipped her head around. One of her braids thwacked the window. “My name is Harriet. Not Harry.” Now the rest of the girls were frowning. Each was at their own bed taping things to the walls or pulling out notebooks. The Faucet girl was at the bed directly across from Harriet wielding an alarming number of stuffed animals. Although, the embroidered teddy bear she brandished at Harriet spelled her name “Fawcett” which struck Harriet as incorrect. 

“Ok, well that’s not what people call you. Mandy was just trying to be friendly, Harriet. Anyways, aren’t you going to close that window?” said Faucet, drawing nods from Lisa and Mandy. Lisa was wearing something yellow and ruffled now. Harriet was unpleasantly reminded of Aunt Petunia’s fancy dinner clothes. 

“Nope,” said Harriet, “I’m gonna sleep now.” Harriet flopped forward towards the end of her bed and yanked the curtains closed. She’d rarely been so tired before in her whole life. She heard some whispering from her roommates but it was still quieter than Dudley going up and down the stairs. Harriet idly twisted about and burned off a corner of her pillow so she’d have some ashes to sleep in. After a moment, she also clawed off her tie and toed off her shoes to be a bit more comfy. Sleep came quickly after that.  
*****

The sunlight shouldn’t be here. Sunlight never reached the cupboard. Or fresh air. And everything was much too soft. Harriet stretched out her arms and legs and met no resistance until her fingers grasped wood. Slowly she opened her eyes and craned her neck back. The sun was rising upside-down. It was barely shining from behind a green field hovering above a pink and blue sky. Harriet rolled over onto her belly to put the world rightside up again. She figured from the sun’s position in the sky, as well as the sleeping noises around her, that classes hadn’t started yet. Once again, Harriet’s energetic nature was a godsend. Harriet was more than ready to go exploring. 

Harriet re-braided her hair and considered her to-do list. She would need so much more tinder to fill up such a big bed with ashes. Luckily, she was inside of the grandest dwelling she’d ever seen. There had to be some old wooden junk laying around somewhere. Once she figured that out she could get a schedule and find all of her classrooms. Preparation made easy work, was Harriet’s philosophy. That’s why people stored firewood for winter. She threw open her bedcurtains and scrambled down to open her trunk. Inside she had a sturdy shoulder bag that she’d filled with plastic grocery bags. She kept three and put the rest into the trunk. Her textbooks went into one plastic bag and the other two baggies went into her shoulder bag beside them. Now, whatever she found wouldn’t get her books dirty. She stuck a few pens in her pockets and waltzed out the door.

Downstairs, three humans were seated by the hearth, two small like Harriet and one larger. The larger one, a girl, was patting the backs of the two smaller – younger? – students as they hiccuped and squeaked and let tears drip down their screwed-up red faces.

As Harriet descended the staircase the tall girl looked up and frowned over at Harriet. The hearth was in the same direction as the exit, so Harriet continued walking forward only to halt when the girl spoke to her.

“Homesick as well, luv? If you’d like to come sit, I’ve hot cocoa for any firsties who’d like.” As she spoke, the girl slowly stopped frowning and began to smile. In contrast, Harriet stopped smiling and began to frown.

“Homesick?” she found herself asking. The two small students quieted slightly and peered up at Harriet from their position tucked beneath the tall girl’s arms. Said girl tilted her head to one side like a bird.

“You know,” she said, “missing your family, your room, your home. It’s perfectly normal for kiddos first leaving home, so we prefects make sure we’re available for the first few weeks. That is why you’re up so early, isn’t it?”

Harriet considered this for a moment. She supposed it made a certain amount of sense. The word threw her off, but now that it had been explained the concept itself was very understandable to Harriet. She’d been missing her ‘home’ ever since she’d been trapped in human form, in so much as a fire’s hearth was their home.

“I’m always homesick,” she answered, "so I must be up early for some other reason". The tall girl frowned yet again, but Harriet had, in contrast, gone back to smiling. Her morning had barely begun, and already she’d learned something new about humans.

Harriet turned on her heel and walked out the door, leaving the sound of crying behind her.  
*****  
Harriet felt her first week of classes had gone very well. Reading books was so much easier here at Hogwarts than at the Dursley’s place, and the only things keeping her away from the library were classes and sleep. She didn’t go to breakfast, or dinner if she could avoid it, but lunch she generally got yanked to by the flow of traffic from morning to afternoon classes. Still, one hour was a pittance of a loss compared to time lost being locked in her cupboard. 

Charms class was taught by a very small, probably not human, man with black sclera and pointy ears. He was very excited by her name and less excited when Harriet was the only student to answer a question with “Mmh,” and a shrug.

Transfiguration in particular came very easily to Harriet. Fires turn one thing into another all the time, after all. If anything Harriet found the classroom transfiguration to be very inefficient. Turning one thing into another should keep both sides equal, but the way Old Diagon Lady taught seemed to require more from the caster than the caster got out of it. It was like Old Diagon Lady thought magic just happened because she wanted it to! 

Old Diagon Lady was also very obsessed with her name. She’d told her that her father, who she was named after, apparently, had been good at transfiguration. And been a troublemaker.

“Shame you weren’t in Gryffindor” Harriet had heard her mumble as she walked away to nag someone else. Just because she was a cat sometimes did not make her anything other than a weird old lady in as far as Harriet was concerned. 

Harriet’s exploring time was proving very useful. The castle was littered with abandoned rooms full of dusty wooden furniture. Harriet had never eaten so well in her life. 

All in all, Harriet was on cloud nine the morning of her first potions class.  
*****  
The dungeons were Harriet’s official least favorite place in Hogwarts. The stones along the corners of the ceiling were literally dripping. There were no windows, barely any torches, and everything felt damp. Harriet turned one dark corner after another before she finally found a clump of children in blue and yellow ties. When Harriet arrived conversation petered out amongst those near where she came to stand. A few of Harriet’s roommates and some girls in yellow ties were staring at her. 

“Hi, Harriet! Lisa and I were just telling Hannah and Susan about how potions class is super difficult. You agree with us, right?” said Mandy.

Harriet stared. How was she supposed to know how difficult potions class is?

“How am I supposed to know how difficult potions class is?”

Lisa laughed a tiny bit but stopped quickly. Mandy looked like Harriet had slapped her. The yellow-ties, on the other hand, looked smug.

“See, Mandy?” said the blonde yellow-tie, “we’re all first years here, no one is guaranteed to be better than anyone else.” In response Mandy put her hands on her hips and pouted. 

“Well, I guess if you want to listen a girl who doesn’t understand how a hairbrush works, then be my guest!” Mandy marched off and Lisa followed with an odd shrug back to Harriet. Harriet had no idea what had just happened. The blonde yellow-tie grimaced slightly at her. 

“So, Harriet. My name is Susan Bones. I don’t think we’ve been introduced. This is my friend, Hannah Abbott. How do you do?” Susan stuck out her hand at Harriet, like the pale boy had done on the train. Harriet mimicked her as that had worked last time. Like the pale boy Susan looked at Harriet’s hand for a moment and then grabbed onto it and moved it harshly up and down twice. This ritual seemed to satisfy her, and Hannah as well when the yellow-tie immediately moved to do the same.

“How do I do what?” asked Harriet, “and what on earth just happened? Am I supposed to have taken potions classes already?” Hannah giggled a little before Susan cut in.

“No, Harriet! You’re fine, Mandy was just being silly. All that house-nonsense about only Ravenclaws having any brains is rubbish, if you ask me.” Susan sighed and looked at Harriet expectantly. 

Harriet looked back for a moment. She wondered if this was all some sort of elaborate joke.

“Yes, rubbish. We’re in a castle. Not a house. And raven’s brains are in their heads, not their claws.” Harriet was very sure of both of those things. Not for the first time she wondered if the students in Hogwarts spoke some strange cult-dialect or just really were that stupid. Hannah was turning an odd pinkish color and making squeaky noises as she leaned in towards Susan, who looked oddly like Dudley when he watched TV.

“I guess Harriet here is a case-in-point, eh Susan?” gasped Hannah before bursting out into laughter. Harriet got the sense she was being called stupid and did not like it one bit. At least she knew what birds looked like on the inside, unlike these morons!

“Harriet, you do know about the school houses, right?” Susan asked weakly. Before Harriet could reply the door labeled “Potions” swung open with a creaky whine. Someone should really bring some oil down here, thought Harriet. 

Framed in the doorway was a dark-haired man with dark eyes. He reminded Harriet of how she looked after a few days locked in her cupboard. 

“Enter.” The man had the deepest voice Harriet had ever heard. Harriet filed in with Hannah and Susan, but ended up seated next to Padma near the front of the classroom. She pulled out her potions book, devilishly excited for her first science class. Potions reminded her so much of chemistry, and chemistry reminded Harriet of fire. 

The potions classroom was full up with four rows of two-person desks. At the front the teacher was standing in front of a massive black slate with a recipe and instructions written on it in loopy handwriting. The students sat quickly and stopped speaking nearly immediately, except for Padma who leaned towards Harriet and ignored when Harriet leaned away.

“The scar on your forehead, that’s where he did it, right? That’s where you-know-who-“ Padma was interrupted by the professor slamming a flat piece of wood down against the desk directly in front of Harriet. Harriet reflexively dug her fingernails into her chair and scratched out eight little grooves that were already starting to smell like smoldering wood. Without looking down she shuffled to hide each scorch mark under her skirt. The professor glared at Harriet as he moved back to the giant slate. His robe brushed Harriet’s shin, begging for a spark. 

“I am Professor Snape. You are here to learn the subtle science and exact art of potion-making,” he began, causing Harriet to lean forward in her seat, “As there is little foolish wand-waving here, many of you will hardly believe this is magic. I don't expect you will really understand the beauty of the softly simmering cauldron with its shimmering fumes, the delicate power of liquids that creep through human veins, bewitching the mind, ensnaring the senses... I can teach you how to bottle fame, brew glory, even stopper death—if you aren't as big a bunch of dunderheads as I usually have to teach.” Harriet was bemused. She couldn’t imagine anyone being so silly as to not recognize the magic of meticulous ritual. She was ready to start learning, already! 

“Ms.Potter!” Harriet sat bolt upright as Snape addressed her directly. “What would I get if I added powdered root of asphodel to an infusion of wormwood?” Snape looked oddly expectant of her, like he was searching for something in her eyes. Harriet purposefully broke eye contact as quickly as she could in case he was going to try and steal her eyeballs for himself. 

“Mmmm sleep potion thing” Harriet shrugged. She really hated answering questions in class. Snape looked briefly pained before his face twisted up like Aunt Petunia when she was getting ready to swat her. 

“Let's try again. Potter, where would you look if I told you to find me a bezoar?” Snape was glaring at her in a way that suggested there was no right answer. Either he wanted her to know, so he could get angry, or he didn’t want her to know, so he could get angrier. 

“Mmrhmrhhrm,” said Harriet unintentionally. Snape was smiling now like he was planning to bite her.

“Tut, tut. Fame clearly isn't everything,” he purred, “What is the difference, Potter, between monkshood and wolfsbane?”

Harriet shrugged. Snape was immediately incensed. “You will answer me with words, Ms.Potter! Or you will find yourself losing house points.” Harriet looked up at him and could nearly taste the smoke rising within her. Snape wanted words? Harriet could give him words!

“Okay,” Harriet said in a perfectly even tone. Harriet clenched her jaw after that single word as hard as she could, trying to communicate with every fiber of her being that no more speech would be drawn from her despite her apparent “agreement”. This Snape bastard might get her words, but the day she actually answered a question for him would be the day she burned off her own tongue.

Snape glared at her like he was physically restraining himself from strangling her. Harriet was reminded eerily of Uncle Vernon. The man took a deep breath and then went completely blank, standing up straight and striding away. 

“Thought you wouldn’t even open your textbook before class, eh, Potter? Just like your lazy father. Well, you’ll find it hard to coast on your celebrity in my classroom. Twenty points from Gry- Ravenclaw. For stupidity.” Snape smiled nastily at Harriet before turning to face the general class. 

Harriet hated him so much.  
*****  
Harriet sat in an abandoned classroom after potions with a hundred new questions in her mind. 

Apparently, Harriet was a celebrity. This confused her more than anything else. She’d never been in the newspaper or given any big speeches. Sometimes, Harriet wondered if humans had some secret way of talking she didn’t get. No one Harriet had ever met seemed to have as many questions as her. Rather, at the Dursleys no one had ever wondered about anything. Harriet was pretty certain that Dudley had never even learned her name. Also, while she was complaining, people here seemed to love to call her “Hairy”. Which Harriet was not, in this lifetime or ever, going to tolerate. It was even worse than “the Girl who Lived”. Harriet looked up at the desk above her and used one fingertip to carefully burn H-A-R-R-I-E-T into the wood. 

Whatever “the Girl who Lived” meant people seemed happy about it because somehow she’d done something with “you-know-who”. Well, Harriet didn’t know who and she’d never worked with anyone in her life or before her life. The Girl who Lived, word for word, could mean any girl who had ever taken a breath. Past tense, though, could mean that she was famous for dying. 

Harriet wasn’t going to think about that too deeply. 

Harriet reached up once more and drew an outline of her scar above her name. All she knew right now was that her “celebrity” had something to do with her scar. Everyone wanted to see it, but only once they’d established that she was the Girl who Lived. Padma, in potions, she’d said “that’s where you-know-who…”. So perhaps I-don’t-know-who had given her the scar or healed the wound or spit onto her forehead or something. Given how happy people were about what happened Harriet figured that either people had really liked the unnamed man and were glad she’d helped him, or they hated him and were glad she’d harmed him. 

None of this explained how her parents came to be infamous. Everyone here knew…her…parents. The parents? Harriet Potter’s parents? Harriet wasn’t sure if the…thing that Harriet Potter was before the burning could have come from human parents. Maybe the Potters gave birth to a daughter and then Petunia took it and hit its head until there was nothing left but a slave. Petunia did like hitting Harriet in the head with things. Harriet burned a little stick-figure man into the wood on one side of her name, and a stick-woman on the other. Then she set the entire desk on fire. She rolled out from beneath it and crawled beneath the desk next door.

Harriet wondered which parent Petunia was related to. What if Harriet Potter had come from people like Petunia? Or maybe Petunia hated the Potters and that’s why she hated Harriet. Or maybe Petunia loved the Potters and was angry that Harriet Potter had been a soulless puppet. 

Harriet needed to think logically. She stuck a desk leg into her mouth and let it start smoking like a pipe from the Sherlock Holmes stories she’d read. If people looked at Harriet “Potter” and immediately thought of the Potters, then two things had to be true. First, that the Potters were well-known around here and second that Harriet looked a lot like them. That’s what a detective would say.

Well-known, or maybe it was their daughter’s infamy projecting back onto them. About the only thing Harriet knew they had done was die. Harriet didn’t even know the Potter’s names. Old Diagon Lady said the Potter Father was…good at transfiguration. Snape said that he was lazy. No one would say anything about…the mother. Witness accounts were bad for detectives because people are almost always bad witnesses. Harriet broke the ash off the end of her “pipe” and started piling it up on her skirt. 

Harriet wondered if the Potters had known something was wrong with their daughter. Maybe the sick thing had killed them before Harriet could remember! Or maybe the Potters had created the thing people thought was their daughter. Harriet shuddered and started burning another desk leg, a bit hotter this time.

Harriet knew when she had come to be: that fateful day in the hearth. But Harriet could not begin to guess when the daughter of the Potters had become…the empty shell at the Dursleys. Or if the thing at the Dursley’s had ever been a little girl at all. 

Harriet set the desk above her and the three desks closest to her on fire so quickly that it made her ears pop. People shouldn’t talk about the Potters when only their daughter should have had the right to do so. Harriet especially shouldn’t speak about them. All Harriet knew was that something horrible had happened and Harriet Potter’s body had lingered for at least six years before Harriet moved in. Nothing indicated that the Potters were bad, good, or even related to her. Harriet was six years away from anything to do with the Potters. That included blame. 

Harriet curled up tighter in the ashes of the desk she was had scorched an imprint of into the stone. Harriet was making the promise, right that instant, that someday, when she was done with it, she would ensure her body got the grandest, most respectful cremation she could provide. Just in case the…that is, Harriet Potter’s…parents cared. 

Anyways, more important was whatever was up with the forbidden third floor corridor. Harriet knew what she was doing with her weekend! 


	6. The Trick-or-Treater

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harriet makes friends! Actual human friends! At least, they think they're friends. Harriet is just kind of rolling with it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Good god. Everything about this chapter surprised me.

Halloween approached within the hallowed halls of Hogwarts with all the subtlety of a bonfire. Around every corner, pumpkins could be found floating, bloated with candlewax which seeped through the gaps carved between sharpened teeth. The suits of armor seemed to have picked up on the mood early, and often froze in positions of either terror or aggression depending on their disposition and arsenal of weaponry. Cobwebs that had laid undisturbed for centuries took this month as their cue to grow along every corner and window the darkness could touch. Even the portraits appeared enthused and the more modern portraits took it upon themselves to don costumes procured from neighbors willing to swap clothing for a week or two. Harriet had caught more than one that would go comically still when gazed upon, but move into some improbable position the moment they were out of sight, only to freeze again as soon as their victim looked back. It seemed to Harriet that in all the excitement the paintings had fruitlessly forgotten that everyone already knew they could move, yet she was startled when several girls in her charms class complained of how startling they found the whole spooky affair.

Harriet herself had observed the proceedings with no expectation of inclusion. At the Dursley’s, Halloween was more associated with Dudley being particularly jumpy when she entered a room and neighborhood children daring each other to speak at her when she went out. At Hogwarts, Harriet simply continued on with her schooling. So far the flow of information she was given had not slowed, yet neither had it diversified. Harriet found herself deeply missing mathematics and fiction and chemistry. The library did well to make up for this oversight of her classes, and so Harriet found she had fallen into a routine just as the castle around her decided a change of routine was necessary for seasonal celebration. In fact, the only person who seemed as uninterrupted as Harriet was the pale boy and his two companions.

Draco, the pale boy, and Crab and Boil had not changed one bit and as such Harriet found her understanding of these humans was greater than she had of any others within the castle. Draco in particular may as well have been a star in the sky for how Harriet could tell time and navigate by his orbit of her. Every break between classes, and often in the time between the end of classes and dinner, Draco would find her and talk for as long as she stood still. She, Crab, and Boil would stand near him and look at various walls until Draco or Harriet felt the need to be elsewhere. It was the most respectful, beneficial arrangement Harriet had ever had with a human.

From snippets she’d bothered listening to, she had even begun categorizing the formats of Draco’s speeches like she would analyze the works of great novelists and poets. There was the great tragedy, which involved Draco explaining how his school-work was unfairly difficult and insultingly easy at the same time. There was the comedy, which involved Draco explaining how one human or another was much worse than him due to having the exact same quality as him. There was the drama, which involved Draco memorizing lines from a recent event and choreographing a representative rendition to perform. And there was the historical fiction, which involved Draco explaining how his father had changed the world, but how nothing in the world was any better and that’s why Draco’s father was going to use his immense power to change the world back to what it used to be. Draco always seemed to think she’d be particularly interested in that. Harriet preferred his dramas. Sometimes she even applauded for those.

One week before Halloween, Draco found Harriet after class as she was walking to the library and stopped her to begin his daily speech. It seemed today was a great tragedy day. Crab and Boil looked somewhat more stoic than usual, like they were drooping inside of their massive robes and trying to hide it, so Harriet found some old quills and marbles in her pocket that she’d found on the floor and handed them over to the two boys. They grunted. Harriet grunted back. These two may be her favorite humans in the world. She understood why Draco ingratiated himself to them.

Draco was now looking back and forth between Harriet and his large boys with confusion etched over his face. He seemed to fight with himself for a moment before moving on. Harriet did appreciate his dedication to routine.

“So, Harriet,” began Draco, and Harriet reflexively prepared to begin tuning him out, “I understand you are getting above average grades in every class but potions and defense. I suppose that makes sense, given your house, that you’d be such a prodigious student. As such, I have decided that I will offer you tutoring in both potions and defense in return for, erm, some slight assistance in the classes which you have a slightly better grasp on. Now, shall we go to the library?” This was the first deal Draco had ever offered Harriet, and she found herself hesitating. While it was true she did not receive much information from those two classes, she had no guarantee that the information Draco had was equivalent to the information she could provide for Charms, Transfiguration, Herbology, and Astronomy.

“I want pastries. When we study.” At Harriet’s announcement, Crab and Boil visibly perked up and looked hopefully to Draco. The pale boy sighed to the ceiling as if he was performing one of his little plays and finally looked back to Harriet.

“Fine,” he said, “but you’ll be expected to share!”

Their first session didn’t come until two days later, after an interesting herbology class shared between Slytherins and Ravenclaws. They’d been planting a flower which whistled under poor conditions. Harriet and Draco’s flower had whistled whenever she so much as got near it, but Harriet had written down enough about what it would find distressing that she’d been praised by Professor Sprout anyways.

Harriet, Draco, Crab, and Boil set up camp at a more secluded table in the library where the librarian was unlikely to see their snacking and chatting. It had been occupied, but Crab and Boil had grunted at the small yellow-tie girls until they left.

Harriet took a seat by the window, edged in by Crab, with Draco across from her and with Boil kitty-corner. As soon as Draco was settled, Harriet held out one hand palm up and pointedly looked at his bag.

With some grumbling, Draco thunked a plate down onto the table next to his herbology book. It was stacked with little doughy bits dolloped in multiple colors of jam. Crab went for a purple jam treat as Harriet quickly reached in ahead of him. The first three pastries she unceremoniously shoved into her mouth. Boil looked faintly impressed where Draco looked faintly disgusted.

“Honestly Potter,” he said, “have you ever heard of chewing?”

“Mmm pretty stupid of you,” she replied, “to snark at the girl you asked for help.”

“What?” said Draco, “you can’t talk with food in your mouth, Harriet, you’re completely incomprehensible. Anyways, the assignment from McGonagall is horrible, what are you planning to write?” He yanked out his textbook and several fluffy quills scattered across the table. Crab rescued the snacks just in time. “I was planning to write about how size similarity eases visualization.”

“Huh.” Harriet grabbed some paper and a quill that had drifted to her side of the table. “Well well I think you um well. That’s good. Not the point but good. Why do you use a needle to teach transfiguring matchsticks, not a feather? Or a string?” Harriet kept her eyes on Draco as she grabbed a sewing needle from her pocket and speared another dessert. Chewing around the needle trapped between her lips, she started drawing a threaded needle next to a lit match.

“How should I know?” Draco looked down at her drawing curiously. She finished and drew and circle around them each, then put a cross through the circle in one swift stroke.

“Because there’s no reason to be scared of feathers or bits of string.”

“There’s no need to be scared of needles or matches either!”

“No need to be scared, but reason to be. If you don’t respect needles and flames then you’ll get their sharpness. You don’t need to be scared so long as you know the reason you should be. Like transfiguration.” Draco looked less aggressive yet more confused. Harriet held up the needle and pricked one finger on it. She twisted said fingers around to reveal a matchstick. She shoved the tip into her mouth behind her teeth and popped it out sharply. Draco flinched as it lit a bare six inches from his nose. 

*****

Halloween Night had Harriet avoiding the Great Hall on pain of death. There had not been so much noise and light since her first time in the castle, and she was not going to put up with such a mess of humanity when she could simply make herself a nice bed of ashes to curl up in.

She walked down a corridor with windows facing out on the silvered night-bound forest and moon. The windows were closed, and the air smelled horrible. Harriet began sucking in as much air as she could stand through her mouth to burn away at the unusually rich air. Soon the hall smelled more like smoke than sewage. To Harriet’s left was a bathroom, and she considered that perhaps a toilet had backed up. She was so glad it was not her job to deal with that anymore. Humans were disgusting.

All thoughts vanished from Harriet’s mind when horrified screams began to echo around her from what felt like every direction. In the same moment, Harriet spun on her heel as the bathroom door shattered under the weight of some massive, grey-green limb. The room beyond the doorway was a blinding white, with water already spilling over a shining floor, and Harriet cringed away from both the gargantuan green humanoid and the room it was in. She heated up as she prepared to bolt.

Then, she glanced past the beast and realized that the screaming wasn’t coming from the creature, but from a small human girl cowering under one of the sinks. She was screaming and pushing herself backwards away from the creature, cornered and empty-handed even as the beast lumbered towards her. Her brown eyes were blown wide with obvious fear.

She moved before she thought. Harriet burned away chunks of door in her haste to get into the slowly flooding bathroom. Inside, the sound and smell was almost unbearable. The water from the smashed sink was spraying up in an arc through the air and dampening the entire room, and the beast snapped another one open with a damp and rotting wooden log even as Harriet pushed forward. The club looked to be nearly the size of Harriet, and she held her cloth-covered arm up over her nose and mouth as it swung the club down and shattered yet another of the sinks on the way towards the shivering girl.

With a low growl, Harriet leapt forward and latched onto the beast’s tree-trunk leg. It was the only dry thing within reach, by now, and also coincidentally her target. Digging in her fingernails, she wrapped her legs around the tensing stump as tightly as possible. Then, she bit down and fanned her flames. Almost immediately smoke began to spew from the knobbly, thick skin. Flames licked against Harriet’s teeth and the beast’s skin, and she heard a deafening roar from above her. Unfortunately, before she could break through the skin Harriet was forced to let go and roll as the beast kicked forward. Harriet rolled deeper into the bathroom, flinching away from the water puddling on the floor, only to stop when she collided with something warm and dry, something that immediately grabbed onto her with shaking hands. Harriet sat up and looked down, finding two arms wrapped around her middle and desperately pulling her to one side. Harriet twisted her head around and met those fear-filled brown eyes, now even more desperate as they caught Harriet’s. The water from the sinks and the howls from the beast covered up all other sound, but Harriet noticed the girl mouthing something. Harriet had no time to stop and figure out what. 

The creature slammed its weapon down inches from Harriet’s toes. She and the girl both flinched back, and Harriet tried to spread her arms out to shield the human girl as best she could. Humans were so much more fragile than her, it was just instinctive. Above them both, the beast looked down at Harriet and, as it lifted its club out of the small crater in the white tiles, Harriet saw something like fear and confusion in a set of tiny black beetle-eyes, and a snarl opening over fuzzy, crooked teeth. Harriet knew this look from Aunt Petunia. Or rather, her body remembered.

This was the look of something that was about to kill her.

Fire hadn’t so much as fazed this thing yet, and Harriet couldn’t use anything hotter without risking burning the girl behind her. Other than fire, she knew one and only one spell. 

Harriet twisted out of the girl’s hold and fumbled for her wand, but the club was being raised yet again and Harriet knew she was out of time. Grabbing the girl’s robes, Harriet shoved the human as hard as she could across the tiles towards the nearest intact stall. The girl met her eyes as she skidded backwards on the slick tiles. She didn’t look so scared, anymore, as much as she looked astounded. Harriet was glad at the change, and the lack of fear that remained in the girl even when she looked at something behind Harriet and gasped in apparent horror. 

The hairs on Harriet’s head were blown back, something passing just overhead, and she ducked down just as something massive hit the wall behind her. Harriet let out a single sharp breath as she was immediately surrounded by falling shards of mirror. A quick glance to the right brought her nose to toe with the monster. A further glance showed her the thing that had nearly smashed her head open.

The club was now embedded into the wall, nothing left of the mirror but the frame. The creature yanked out its weapon in a slow, deliberate movement of a single arm the width and texture of a car tire. Only Harriet’s glasses kept the rain of dust from her eyes. Through the dry mist she realized she was directly beneath the glaring, gaping creature as it raised its club one final time directly above her. There was no time to move, or burn, or even raise her wand away from the floor. The floor right between the beast’s legs. Harriet swallowed hard and, with a burning sense of purpose, flared. 

“Wingardium Leviosa!”

Every glass shard within the bathroom, most of which were directly beneath the troll and Harriet’s wand, rocketed straight upwards. A flash of light in the corner of her eye slashed upwards against Harriet’s cheek and she felt a lick of flame quickly scorch the wound shut. The beast started bellowing so loudly it spewed bits of spit and snot as it hunched over, dropping the club with a tile-shaking thud merely a foot to her left. Before it could recover, Harriet reached up and sent a spark leaping from her finger to the loincloth over the worst of the blood. It curled with flames right over the criss-cross of slashes still full of metal. This time, the fire caught and Harriet could taste the smoke which was overwhelming the stench of the living monster. It fell forwards and the crackling fire stopped, likely from the water, but Harriet did not care. The beast had stopped breathing, too. 

Before anything else could go wrong, Harriet bolted out of the corner towards the human in the bathroom stall. The girl looked stunned, staring over at the beast, but when Harriet ran towards her that attention snapped away and the girl straightened up with pleasing efficiency. She reached out her hand as soon as Harriet extended her own. As soon as their fingers intertwined, Harriet yanked the girl upwards and pulled her into a run towards the door. They almost made it, Harriet ahead and the girl a half-step behind, only for the remnants of the door to vanish and reveal a crowd of professors. Harriet stopped dead in her tracks. The girl collided with her, and only Harriet’s angle relative to the girl kept them upright to peer up at the older humans. 

“Ms.Potter! What in Merlin’s name has happened here?” McGonagall, as she’d learned Old Diagon Lady was called, was right behind Snape along with a very old man with long white hair and a similar beard. Harriet pushed her entire body backwards away from the potions professor in particular, and the girl’s nose dug into her back before the weight of her body lifted away. Above them both, Snape was scowling and twirling his wand above tightly crossed arms. He looked, yet again, like Aunt Petunia readying to thwack Harriet across the face.

Harriet was frozen. She couldn’t bring herself to look behind her with so many adults who could kick her out hovering over her. Instead, she squeezed down hard on the hand still within her own. Snape was looking her right in the eyes, and Harriet felt like she was falling down a dark hole. Everything had stopped all at once but Harriet was still hot and ready to run or spit sparks. Dimly, she realized she was shaking. It made no sense, given she wasn’t scared or even really able to feel scared. It was more like the body was breaking apart around her as it failed to totally hold her inside.

Nape broke eye contact with her with an odd grimace. Behind him, the old man smiled gently.

“Now, Severus, Minerva, how about we back up slightly and speak to the girls in the hallway. Quirinus can check on the troll. It seems to me as though we could all use some fresh air.” Harriet’s feet seemed stuck to the floor for some reason until the hand in hers moved forward and took her with it. The hallway looked just the same as two minutes ago. The windows were still dark, the torches still lit, and the stones still clean and worn. Something brushed past Harriet’s shoulder and her stomach ached horrendously for the moments it was touching her. Out of the corner of her eye she saw something tall and purple entering the bathroom. Snape and McGonagall had stopped a few feet from the broken door and were glaring daggers. The old man next to them was looking curiously at Harriet’s cheek. She was going to scream or spit sparks or run, this was just too much!

Except, that warm hand was tight and firm around her own. The skin was darker than hers, and Harriet decided to lock her eyes onto the contrast rather than look at the humans in her way of leaving. Her breath evened out. 

“It was my fault, Professors!” Harriet felt her eyes widen when the girl attached to the hand spoke for the first time in Harriet’s presence. Her voice was strong, like her grip. “I was in the bathroom when the troll came in, and I was so scared. I’ve read all about trolls, you see, so I did not expect to survive the encounter at all! But then Harry came in and stopped it and got me out of the bathroom. I would have died without her! So, please,” for the first time, the girl’s voice wavered, “don’t punish her! It really wasn’t her fault at all!”

Harriet whipped her head upwards and grabbed their clasped palms with her other hand. The girl was rigidly staring forward at the three adults with blazing brown eyes. She did not look away to meet Harriet’s gaze, but she gave Harriet’s hand a quick, deliberate squeeze. Her wonderfully puffy brown hair hovered around her shoulders, long enough to brush against Harriet’s nose. It smelled like flammable chemicals. She was tall, too, and Harriet had to look up a few inches just to be eye-to-eye with her collar. Harriet untensed and stared at the unusual human at her side. This human, this girl, she was behaving in a way she’d never seen before. Harriet didn’t understand it at all, but it made her feel warm.

“Is this true, Ms.Potter?” McGonagall interrupted. Harriet watched, fascinated, as the girl’s mouth pinched up and her eyes scrunched just slightly. Yet, even then, the girl’s stance and stare remained set. Harriet was impressed.

“Ummm,” Harriet stalled. She had no words, because she had no idea what the humans would want to hear in this situation. After a moment, Harriet decided that going along with whatever this girl said was the best option available to her. Something about her seemed like a fire. So, Harriet nodded without looking away from the girl next to her. 

“Harriet.” This time it must have been old man who spoke, as this voice was the only one new to Harriet. “It seems to me we owe you a thank you. Do you have the time to tell us how it is you managed to help young Ms.Granger?” 

Harriet finally looked away. The old man’s request was very polite, and circumspect in such a way that Harriet did not feel her instincts clamoring for recompense. On first glance, the old man looked old and dry, albeit with very light blue eyes above little gold spectacles. They looked like Harriet’s glasses but cut in half. On second glance, he was smiling softly at her from behind his beard. She liked being smiled at. So, Harriet found some words to gift to the old man.

“I heard screaming,” she mumbled. “Got her out of the way. Um. It smashed the mirrors. I made them float and it bled everywhere. Then I set it on fire a little and grabbed the girl and ran.” The girl made a soft ‘oh’ noise and let go of her hand. Harriet’s hands felt colder, now, and despite never having touched a human for so long at once before Harriet found she was near to pouting at the loss. 

“I haven’t even thanked you yet!” Harriet looked up and saw that the girl was looking down at her with bright eyes and raised eyebrows. She shook her head and a wave of hair bounced around her. Harriet felt hungry. “How rude of me. My name is Hermione Granger, and of course I know who you are. Thank you very much for saving my life. Your spellwork was very impressive. I’ve been watching your course work, you know, so I’m not surprised. You are actually fairly talented despite your responses in class.” Harriet nodded once more. The girl, Hermione, was actually somewhat wonderful. But also confusing. Harriet kind of just wanted to leave and go burn something. 

McGonagall sighed from next to them. “Well, girls, it seems that neither of you was in the great hall during the announcement warning you of a troll wandering the castle. So, we cannot punish you. And as neither of you is injured, I can only warn Ms.Potter to never do something so utterly reckless ever again! I am sure Filius will have more words for you in the morning.” The old witch wagged a finger at her and Harriet resisted the urge to bite it off.

This was likely as close as she’d get to a chance for an escape. So, Harriet took one last glance at the confusing, warm girl. Hermione was looking her up and down with furrowed brows and flickering eyes. Harriet felt oddly like a book being read from cover to cover. Turning towards her dormitory, Harriet considered that, perhaps, something more had happened here that she did not have the capacity to understand. Something important. 

Before she could walk more than a few steps away, the old man held out one hand for her in the “I want to shake” gesture she’d learned from Draco. She held out her hand and the old man took it between both of his dried, crinkly palms. Rather than shaking, he leaned down slightly and looked her closer in the eye. He looked both alike to Mr.Ollivander and nothing alike to Mr.Ollivander.

“You did a very kind, brave thing today Harriet. Thank you. And, I am glad you are both safe.” The old man’s beard was long and very, very light grey. He smiled at her and, to her vast confusion, the warmth Harriet had been feeling from Hermione returned for a single, flickering moment. Harriet was going to burn away an entire hallway of desks trying to deal with this evening’s events, honestly. When the man held her gaze, she tentatively smiled back. Several small, cold things fell into her held hand just before the old man released her and straightened back upright.

Harriet looked down and uncurled her fingers. She was holding a handful of little yellow candies. “Ah,” said the old man, “lemon drops, my favorite candies. I find that a bit of sugar helps keep me on my feet when I feel shaky or tired. Good night, Harriet.” Offerings were another thing Harriet was terribly unused to, but flickering internally over. Walking away, she popped them one by one into her mouth. They were delicious, and gave her just as much warmth as the humans she was walking away from.


	7. The Troll Killer

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harriet doesn't think she has friends. Several people think otherwise, and not all of them are wrong.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A short little thing. Hermione will be back and important next chapter. Many thanks to Relissi for getting me to write about Harriet's dorm room.

Harriet woke up the next morning to whispering. Normally, she would have woken before this could happen but it seemed last night had been more draining than she thought.

 

Everything felt hazy and soft in the morning light. Her bed had become even ashier in her weeks of whiling away her sleeping hours. The blanket was intact, but the sheets and most of Harriet’s pillow had become the foundation for her hearth. Leftovers from her meals also tended to get added so as to keep her bed plush. She was constantly surprised by how much of her ash drifted out of her perpetually open window. The only time she closed it was when it rained. The fresh air made waking up so much easier. It was a perpetual reminder that she was one step closer to freedom from the Dursley’s.

 

At the end of the bed Harriet had put down her towel for wiping her shoes. It kept the crud to a minimum. She liked keeping her space clean and organized despite how small it was. Clothing generally got tossed over either side to sit in ashes that had gone over onto the floor. At the Dursley’s she’d had to get creative to keep herself and her fabrics clean. In the end, wearing clothing more than once was simply practical. In the meantime ash just kept it all nice and soft and smoke-smelling.

 

Unfortunately, today Harriet would have to close the window. There was a slight drizzle pattering against her window ledge, and if the wind picked up her bed would get soaked. Nothing made her less comfortable than the cold and wet. She rolled over and sat up, pushing her glasses up her nose. It was a fresh-clothes day, so she rushed to change her clothes before putting on her shoes at the end of her bed, grabbing her bag, and opening her curtains.

 

Outside, every single one of her dorm-mates was standing and staring at her from a little huddle across the room from her. Su Li was shoulder to shoulder with Padma Patil, and Mandy, Lisa, and Faucet were a few feet away from them and holding their wands.

 

“Oh, um, good morning. Harriet. Did you, er, sleep well?” asked Padma. Harriet shrugged. She’d slept like normal. She wasn’t sure what made some sleep better than other sleep. “Oh, well, that’s good. We, er, we’d all like to speak to you before you go to class, Harriet.” The other girls were nodding now, Su particularly vehemently. Harriet stood still and found herself, for the first time, comparing the girls not to Aunt Petunia but to the girl from last night. Hermione. Compared to Hermione, these girls seemed not exactly colder, but more as though any heat they may possess was too far away from Harriet to be felt. Perhaps, Harriet thought, it was because she’d held Hermione’s hand but not the hands of these girls. One of her braids found itself being twirled between her idle fingers. Hermione’s hair had looked very dry.

 

“Harriet,” said Mandy, “your bed is a pigsty.” She was scowling at Harriet and gesturing impatiently at the bed at Harriet’s back. Harriet took a quick glance behind herself and then turned back around. Harriet’s bed did not appear to have changed in the twenty seconds since she had stood up. Harriet could tell Mandy was using metaphor to attempt to communicate something to Harriet, but for the life of her she had no idea what was being communicated.

 

When the girls showed no signs of leaving her be, Harriet decided to take a guess as to the situation. “Looks like a bed to me,” she said. “My bed.” Lisa began pinching at the bridge of her nose and Harriet found that she, too, was more than ready to be done with this business. Tossing her braids behind her shoulders, Harriet tightly crossed her arms. “Did you have a point?”

 

“Yes, Harriet, we do! The five of us have agreed that you need to clean up! It’s not fair that we all have to live with your mess. I mean, what even is going on? Your bed is covered in dust and your entire pillow is missing! Have you even made your bed once this year?” It was Faucet that had stepped forward with hands-on-hips to give this little speech, but all of the other girls were nodding along with her. Harriet scrunched up her nose and took a moment to look around at their beds with a new eye towards comparison. The other beds had their curtains swept all the way back, revealing tight, flat blankets and colorful stuffed animals against walls covered in moving photos and posters. Su and Lisa should really consider just how many photos of horses they needed to look at each day.

 

“I don’t like making beds. So, I don’t,” Harriet replied. “It’s my space. I like it and it’s not yours so back off.” As she said this, Harriet made sure to look Faucet dead in the eyes. Just because Harriet didn’t know idioms very well yet didn’t mean she hadn’t caught onto more primitive mammalian signals. Under the force of Harriet’s gaze, Faucet flinched back like she’d been pinched and dropped her eyes to stare at the floor.

 

Now, all the girls were getting twitchy. Lisa kept patting Faucet’s shoulder and looking between her and Harriet. Padma had picked up her bag and was shaking her head as she walked out the door. Harriet quickly moved to follow her, but Mandy got in her way before she could escape.

 

“Look, Potter. You’re being a very poor sport about this. So, you’d best clean up in more ways than one if you want to stay friends with us,” said Mandy. At the mere thought of being friends with humans, especially humans like these ones, Harriet scowled and snarled from deep in her inflamed throat.

 

“You were never my friend in the first place. Get out of my way before I move you.” This was the only warning Harriet was prepared to give, and she started walking before Mandy could respond. Their shoulders slammed into each other as Harriet finally managed to head for class.

 

Somehow, Harriet didn’t think potions was going to improve her morning.

*****

Harriet was clinging to her routine by the fingernails as the castle seemed to have gone nutty around her overnight. The entire way to potions people had been whispering and pointing fingers at her.

 

When Draco caught her arm a floor above the dungeons, Harriet nearly blew smoke through her sigh of relief. The pale boy looked flushed, and Crab and Boil were swiveling their heads around to glare at people nearby with their arms bulging in their robes. Draco, moving like the point of a small flock of geese, swiftly led the four of them to a side hall and didn’t stop until they were at the end in a little alcove full of windows. As soon as they stopped, he whirled on his heel and stood toe-to-toe with Harriet. His green tie ended around the tip of her nose. 

 

“What in merlin’s name happened last night, Harriet!” he shrilled. Harriet leaned back and grimaced at the volume. “You weren’t at the feast and then we hear there’s a troll and then the moment we get back to the common room I hear that you killed the bloody thing in a bathroom! Are you out of your mind?” as he spoke, Draco grabbed one shoulder in each hand and kept scanning her up and down. She could only guess Draco was checking for dirt or something. His scan settled on her left cheek and Draco suddenly paled. “Merlin, and you’re injured as well. Have you been to the Hospital Wing?”

 

“I don’t need a hospital. I’m fine, and I’m not out of my mind. And I don’t like Halloween.” As she spoke, Draco rolled his eyes while Crab and Boil shuffled closer. Crab grunted, and Boil shook his head. They were both looking at her with their bottom lips sticking out much further than she’d ever seen before.

 

“If you’re not out of your mind, then how do you explain going after a troll all on your own?” Draco removed his hands from her shoulders and crossed them over his chest, pointing his chin upwards. He looked fake, somehow, like he was only pretending to look mad. Underneath, Harriet could have sworn his eyes were watery.

 

Harriet’s lip quirked up in a half-smile. “I didn’t know about the troll,” she found herself bemusedly explaining, “I was walking to get food away from the feast and I smelled sewage and heard screaming. I ran into the bathroom and the troll, it was gonna kill someone. So, I just attacked it.”

 

“But you could have died!” Draco yelled. “Why didn’t you just run for help, or anything other than putting yourself at risk for some nobody Gryffindor!”

 

“I already explained this.” she bit out. Harriet puffed up her own chest and marched up to be toe-to-toe with him. Draco was supposed to be consistent. This was not consistent. On top of everything else happening in the castle, she couldn’t tell yet if she liked the new things happening or not, and so in the meantime she was planning to be quite angry about everything. Starting with this. “The girl was screaming and I was the only one there and I had to do something! My life is always at risk, and I fight to live like any other thing, but it is not in my nature to just sit there while people get their heads smashed in by monsters that shouldn’t be in my castle in the first place. This place is my home now, and I’m not going to let beasts like that in here to mess it up. That troll got everything it deserved and I’m glad I was the one to kill it!” Draco leaned dangerously far back as Harriet, refusing to mimick his earlier shrieks, snarled in his face. It was taking all of her willpower to keep her flames out of her hair and eyes, and she was literally shaking with the effort. Draco’s eyebrows were hovering at his hairline and she belatedly realized this was the first time she’d seen him without his hair slicked back. “Also, your hair looks less flammable. Which is good.” Behind her, Boil giggled a little.

 

No one moved for a long moment. Slowly, Draco reached out one hand and patted her shoulder, like Lisa had been patting Faucet just minutes ago. It felt like days ago. He grabbed her hand and tucked it into his elbow. Harriet kept her hand as relaxed as possible, concentrating extra hard on keeping her hand cool and not on fire.

 

“Let’s get you to potions, eh, Harriet? No reason for your grades to get even worse on my account.” Draco led Harriet back out onto her route to the dungeons with Crab and Boil falling into step behind them. Even more people were staring and whispering now, but Draco just smirked and held his head straight forward. Harriet mimicked him and found that pretending other people weren’t there worked just as well at Hogwarts as it did at the Dursley’s. A pain behind her eyes she hadn’t even noticed eased away. Her flames returned to a steady burn.

 

The trip to potions class took no time at all with the three boys clearing the crowds in front of them. Draco released her at the door with minutes to spare before class. Just before he turned away, he looked back to her with a smug smirk.

 

“What spell was it, again, that you used?”

 

“Floating spell” she replied. Draco smiled even wider and walked away. Crab and Boil waved before they followed, and Harriet waved back feeling just a slightest bit warmer.

 

Then she had to walk into potions class.

 

Harriet’s usual seat next to Padma was taken. Instead, the only open seat was with a miserable looking boy with a yellow tie. He was at the very back of the room next to the door. Marching in, she tossed her bag beneath the empty seat and sat quickly. She couldn’t read any of the writing on the blackboard from here. When she turned, the boy next to her was eyeing her in the exact way she was scoping him out. He looked clean cut and nervous. Harriet realized with a pang that, after having met Hermione, this boy was somehow even more lacking in her eyes by comparison. She scooted her chair a few inches away.

 

Snape swooped into the classroom at 9 AM on the dot. He swept the class with his icy glower and settled unerringly on her. The sight of her only made his face darker.

 

“Today we will be brewing a cleaning potion. The instructions are on the board, as usual. Begin.”

 

Snape hovered over her for the entire class as she tried to brew a potion with a boy who would barely look at her. The instructions were blurry and small, her scale was dented, and worst of all was her cauldron’s fire. Every time Snape would lean over her and huff and sneer at her potion, the tiny flame would get just a little brighter and hotter and bigger, feeding off of the heat she herself was emitting. She tried desperately to make up for it with precision. She measured each individual worm with a ruler twice before cutting it into perfect halves, just like directed. It didn’t help. By the end of class, her brew had boiled over twice and was a jelly-like consistency while everyone else had a liquid.

 

“Ms.Potter,” Snape purred. “Care to explain how exactly you wasted the ingredients for a simple cleaning potion?” Snape made sure to speak to her this time from the very front of the room where the whole classroom could hear. Harriet saw Lisa, Mandy, and Faucet snort into their fingers.

 

“I overheated it.” She answered. Her teeth were clenched so hard that her face was heating up. Harriet snatched a braid in each hand and squeezed. She could feel the embers trapped in her hair pulse against her palms. Snape smirked nastily at her.

 

“I believe that’s a failed grade for the day, Potter.” With a wave of his wand her potion vanished. Harriet jolted to her feet.

 

“That was mine! You wasted it!” she bellowed. Snape swooped towards her with bared teeth.

 

“Detention! My office, tonight! Now get out of my classroom.”

 

Without a second thought, Harriet grabbed her bag and ran out the door. She had been right. Potions had not remotely improved her morning.

*****

Harriet had been tugged along to lunch after potions by none other than Draco and his large boys, who seemed to be dedicated to glaring at anyone who so much as glanced at her. So, she followed them all the way to the lunch table. Draco did give her an odd look when she sat down with them, but seemed to shake it off quickly in favor of leaning over to prepare his dish. Scattered before the four of them were a neat variety of dishes, most glistening with some form of grease, and pitchers of juices, most some shade of orange or gold. None of the liquids smelled useful for Harriet. The meats and breads, however, were tantalizing.

 

The green-ties around this particular table seemed to be avoiding several dishes for Harriet’s perusal today. While everything did look delicious, she tried not to interfere with the eating habits of the humans. Back at the Dursleys, food had been a daily battle, and by now her instinct was to grab whatever food was unwanted and, if a human attempted to stop her, retaliate. These juvenile humans did not deserve her habitual response to a dispute over food. So, she reached carefully over whatever roasted meat thing Draco was serving himself and grabbed an ignored pie-like thing. Whatever it was there were several whole fish sticking out, eyeballs and all. She wondered if they’d pop under high heat. Draco grimaced at her meal and started to say something, but before he could she yanked out one whole fish and swallowed it down. Her suspicions had been correct. Fish eyeballs do pop under heat.

 

“Draco,” whined a nearby girl with shiny black hair, “what is she doing here? Did you have to bring your Ravenclaw mutt here? She’s putting everyone off their food.”

 

“Oh Pansy, if you want to leave, I’m sure no one would mind. And besides, don’t you think a diet would do you some good? For your, well, health, I mean.” Draco was smiling a touch too wide with his eyes scrunched shut at the girl. “Unless, that is, you’re no longer hoping to attend the Malfoy Christmas Gala.” Draco scanned the girl up and down. “We hardly let in such…ill-mannered guests, especially those who lack the discipline to fit into their dress robes.” The girl got red and blotchy around her nose and turned her eyes away with an incoherent mutter. She looked suitably cowed. This was why Harriet kept Draco around, honestly. Said boy turned back to her with a much calmer smile, a smile which she returned.

 

“What’s a diet?” she asked idly. The fish bones were crumbling away in her stomach.

 

Draco smirked and elbowed Crab. “Nothing you will ever need to worry about, obviously, right Crabbe? Goyle?” Crab shuffled and turned reddish, and next to Harriet Boil made a deep grumbling noise like boulders grinding together. “Anyways, Harriet, I assume you’ll join us in rooting for Slytherin in the upcoming Quidditch match? It’s Slytherin versus Gryffindorks, so I just knew you’d be excited to see them get beaten down. Those idiots.” Draco started giggling and interrupted himself. Harriet snagged the opportunity for more exposition.

 

“I like fights, especially when idiots get beat. How’s quidditch work?” she asked. Draco gasped and put a hand over his heart like her words had actually made his heart mis-beat. It was a hilarious affectation and Harriet giggled into her half-eaten fish.

 

“You don’t know quidditch? Honestly Harriet, I knew you were a nerd but I didn’t expect you to be such a girl!”

 

“Yes,” she allowed. Then, Harriet frowned. “I am a girl. You hadn’t noticed?” she replied. Crab and Boil coughed into their meals. Draco just rolled his eyes and grinned.

 

“Hilarious, Potter. Anyways, quidditch is only the best sport in the history of sports. It’s played by expert athletes on broomsticks. I’ve been to quite a few national league tournament matches, you know. It’s a travesty that first years aren’t allowed to try out for the house teams. I’ve been flying for years at home. Ah well, next year I’ll be sure to get the seeker position.” He puffed up for a moment and then looked expectantly over to Harriet. She nodded obligingly. “Good, then I’ll see you at the match this weekend.” That hadn’t been what she was nodding to, but okay.

 

“Where is it?” she asked. Draco looked at her for a long moment. He was looking at her like he looked at Crab and Boil during study time. It was a weird mix of exasperation and smugness.

 

“I’ll walk you there. Just be by the front door on Saturday by 10.”

 

Before Harriet could question Draco further, a much more interesting companion alighted upon the table in a graceful flurry of tawny feathers.

 

“Hey!”

 

Harriet ignored the humans yelping around her in favor of greeting the beautiful visitor gifting her with its presence. The owl, slightly larger than Harriet’s head, had landed in the remains of Harriet’s fish pie. A squishy piece of dough gooshed out from between the owl’s talons and Harriet beamed. Her eyelids felt stretched from her attempt to make her own eyes owl-like. The owl, splendorous and with gold-coin eyes, was fluttering its wings in the pot. She would happily share near anything she could with this spectacular organism, especially her meal. The owl screeched. The pink folds of its throat glimpsed out from its maw. None of the flesh was anything more than flesh. Harriet screeched back. Undoubtedly, her throat looked the same, despite what laid underneath. 

 

“For Merlin’s sake, Harriet.”

 

Continuing to ignore the noisy masses, Harriet held out a fish head to her guest even as the owl raised an elegant, pie-covered foot with a slightly grease-stained paper tied with twine just above its scaly spur.

 

The paper had her name written on it.

 

The owl snapped the fish head from Harriet’s fingers then tilted its darling head back and swallowed it in one whole, clean piece, much more efficient and pleasant than any of these humans generally managed. Immediately, Harriet darted her fingers to the note and slipped it from the loop of string. The note was small, and her name was written in a simple, quill-spiked black. Harriet wriggled in her seat with joy. A letter, and an owl, all at once. Hogwarts truly was wonderful. As the owl finished its snack, Harriet cooed and was rewarded with a gentle gargling noise before the feathered messenger spread its wings and departed back into the open, clear air.

 

“Mmmm,” said Harriet, watching the owl fly out a window. She supposed no reply was needed, then.

 

Looking down at her note, Harriet leaned slightly back on the bench to avoid Boil’s searching eyes. If he got much closer, she’d likely burn him in friendly warning. The human symbiotes were an odd pair, and she wouldn’t like for them to get too close to her and die. Her mercy only extended to the edge of her flames, after all. Now out of Boil’s range, Harriet unfurled the note and contentedly began to devour the contents.

 

_To Harriet Potter,_

_Professor Snape tells me he’d like you to report for detention on Tuesday at 7:30pm, in his classroom. I’ve told him that he cannot keep you for more than two hours, so you’ll be finished at 9:30pm. Let me know if your detention runs late._

_If you are having academic trouble in potions, or trouble in any area of your life, please feel free to come speak to me during my office hours, or at any time. As your head of house, I’m here to help!_

_Sincerely,_

_Professor Filius Flitwick_

_Head of Ravenclaw_

 

“What’s it say, then?” said Draco from across the table. Harriet scanned the note over once again, not needing to see Draco’s face to understand his impatient tone.

 

“Detention. Potions. Tuesday, 7:30. Flitwick.”

 

Twin grunts sounded from around her, and Draco made a simple hum of apparent understanding. Harriet absently ate her last pie-fish and flipped the note over to check for anything more. Other than her name, nothing more was written. The two final fish eyes popped, and she smirked outwardly at the inward sizzling of the juices.

 

When Harriet looked up, she scanned the food hall, sweeping over the diverse range of students. At the opposite side of the room, at the red-tie table, her eyes caught on Hermione. Hermione was watching Harriet from her seat near the end of her table. The spots near her were taken up with books and parchment. As Harriet stared, Hermione blinked and leaned forward slightly in her seat, glancing between Harriet and the humans near to Harriet. Then, Hermione grimaced. Harriet slowly raised a single eyebrow and tilted her head. This expression was intended to communicate curiosity.

 

After a moment longer, Hermione’s eyes turned down to her book, and the girl shook her head slightly. The movement made all of her riotous warm-brown curls ruffle outwards. The hunger that blazed within Harriet nearly surprised her, but only nearly. She was always hungry, after all. And so, Harriet kept her eyes on Hermione’s bowed head and raised the note to her mouth, popping it into her throat, where it caught on a spark.


	8. The Brat

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harriet goes to detention. Ugh.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the newest chapter of my work because I am eternally dissatisfied with my own writing. I actually rewrote chapters seven and nine, as well, and shuffled everything around to fit this chapter in better. I was just rereading my work and thinking how unrealistic it was that detention never got written for Harriet's first year given how she and Snape get on like a house on fire.

Now that Harriet was watching, she’d noticed something odd about Hermione, the afraid-at-first-then-not-afraid human.

 

Hermione was always alone. Where other students hovered in clumps, traveled in pairs, Hermione’s only interactions outside of classes seemed to be when she came around to stare at Harriet. It made Harriet flicker inside, to see Hermione and see her alone. Whenever their eyes met, Hermione’s eyes would dart away like sparks in the breeze. Sometimes, Harriet found it entertaining. Other times, she found it disappointing.

 

Either way, it always made Harriet burn hotter.

 

A different particular flame was within Harriet now, however, and so Hermione was second-to-last in her thoughts. Instead, Harriet was staring at the door to the potions classroom and grimacing, burning through the final seconds ticking down to detention, and therefore to spending more time with Snape than was minimally required.

 

“Enter,” came a low voice from behind the door and Harriet twitched violently. She really, really hated the implication, there, that Snape was aware of her presence while she was unaware of his. Had he been watching her? Harriet thrust the door open quickly, anxious to at least even the stakes by getting Snape into her line of sight as well. As soon as she stepped inside, Snape was easily apparent from his spot behind the large desk at the front of the room, though he did not look up from his stack of papers. “You’re late,” he said off-handedly, scrawling over an essay with a pen dripping red ink. Harriet could smell from across the room that it was not blood, and was mildly surprised. Snape reminded her distinctly of vampires she’d read about in muggle and magical books.

 

“No, I’m not,” she answered. Snape’s nose crinkled. Harriet kept her eyes firmly on the potions professor as she circled around the back of the room to the only desk with supplies upon it. There was a set of tools on the desk which included a knife, and it made her feel less nervous about walking away from the only exit.

 

“10 points from Gry-Ravenclaw, for talking back. Sit down.” Snape scowled at her, looking up for the first time since she entered. Harriet sat. He scowled harder. “Tonight,” said Snape with a nasty smirk, “you will be juicing the pile of flobberworms to your left into the vials to your right. You may not use gloves. I need them for the fourth year class tomorrow, so best hurry up. I will not let you leave here on schedule if you elect to waste my own time even further.”

 

Harriet took one last glance over Snape’s expression, now tinged with a very Dursley-like sadistic glee, and determined she was safe enough to look away. Upon the desk before her, she did indeed find a large pile of maggot-like corpses, each the size of her fist, and a rack of empty glass vials with squared-off bottoms.

 

They looked perfectly fine. Flobberworms weren’t toxic to touch on the inside or outside, she’d read so, and so she wasn’t sure why she’d want gloves anyways. Leaving that one to the mysteries of illogically cruel men, she picked up her first worm, her first vial, and held one above the other before squeezing the flobberworm between her fingers. They were small fingers over a large surface, and she half expected a ‘pop’. Instead, she got a sort of ‘goosh’. In all, her fingers at least made for a good filter to keep the chunks of flesh from the vial while all the liquids dripped down inside.

 

Harriet noted a certain sulfurous odour, and happily breathed in the slightly more flammable air.

 

Three worms in, Harriet noted from the corner of her eye that Snape was watching her with digust written all across his face. “Ms.Potter,” he called, and Harriet stopped her squeezing of a particularly large flobberworm to indicate her temporary attention. “Did it not occur to you,” he said, inscrutability now replacing disgust, “to use the tools provided to you in completing your task?”

 

Harriet stared at Snape for a moment, and the flobberworm she was holding between her eyes and his continued to drip. She assumed he meant the small kit at the desk’s edge with the knife and tongs. As she considered his words, an internal organ of some sort threatened to slip through her fingers and she adjusted her hold so that the glob was instead wedged under her thumbnail.

 

“Nope,” she answered. The toolkit really hadn’t seemed necessary.

 

Snape brought a lone, yellow-stained finger to his temple and closed his eyes. Seeing as he was being as useless and incomprehensible as ever, Harriet decided to get back to her work. At least flobberworms made sense.

 

It was after a half an hour that Harriet’s curiosity got the better of her. She was near halfway done with the pile, and quick checks of Snape showed he was engrossed in his pile of papers. So, when she finished her next worm, she shoved the whole husk of the corpse into her mouth and covered up the sound with the ring of a metal lid being twisted onto the newest vial.

 

However, it seemed she’d failed somehow to be as subtle as she’d hoped. Harriet groaned internally as Snape’s head immediately jerked upright and he looked over her station with a glare. How had Snape even known?

 

“What,” he snarled, wrinkling his lip, “are you up to?” His eyes were more threatening to her than the black lake and a rainstorm combined for how dark and suffocating they were.

 

“Juicing these flobberworms,” she carefully said with her completely empty mouth that had no worms inside whatsoever. Snape smiled, and Harriet relaxed. Then he smiled wider, and Harriet tensed.

 

“10 points again, it seems.” Snape was still smiling, and Harriet could not for the life of her figure out why. Snape spoke often of points and often to her. She’d ask what he meant, but that would mean speaking to him more than necessary. “I suppose I should not be surprised. Your skill in potions is equally revealing of your inability to learn the consequences of your actions.” Snape was smirking, now, staring Harriet down with a raised eyebrow. Harriet was beginning to think that, just maybe, Snape’s smile was happy for reasons Harriet would not find pleasant.

 

Still, the irony of Snape’s words was too much to deal with. Harriet barked out a laugh. Snape flinched in response. Then, in the wake of his reflex, Snape snarled and pinned Harriet with a glare that could melt steel.

 

Now there was a consequence to try on for size.

 

Action and consequence seemed quite simple to Harriet. Put wood in fire, wood burns, wood becomes ash. Say something stupid to Harriet, make Harriet laugh, be scared by Harriet’s laugh, glare at Harriet, and cause the flobberworm in her fist to pop.

 

Snape and Harriet both stared at the partial husk of worm remaining in Harriet’s raised fist. Arguably, they’d never been in such synchronisity before.

 

It appeared to Harriet that her fist clenching down so quickly had achieved what she’d been looking for. This worm did not goosh. This worm’s guts had achieved velocity.

 

Something wet and gelatinous was know sticking to Harriet’s check and upper lip. Snape was staring Harriet in the eyes. Harriet licked her lips. Snape bared every one of his teeth and leaned back away from her.

 

That was what decided it, for Harriet. More than Snape’s apathy, more than his disappointment, more than his anger, more than even his fear. The fear came close, but it was the disgust. That disgust in Snape’s eyes, just like Aunt Petunia’s, that was what made Harriet smolder over the knowledge that she would always absolutely burn with hatred for Snape. Because Snape, he disgusted her.

 

Now that was some synchronisity.

 

As if he could read her mind, Snape spoke in his smooth, stale-water voice. “Just how long will it take for you, Ms.Potter,” he snarled, “to learn to _respect_ your superiors?”

 

Harriet bristled. Inside her, the flobberworm she’d managed to eat did not so much burn as it dissintigrated.

 

“Nothing is superior to me,” she spat. In her head, just in case Snape was listening, she added on: ‘especially not you!’

 

“Arrogant brat!” bellowed Snape. He stood from his seat, and Harriet was reminded of just how much taller he was than her, how much broader. With his voice raised so, Harriet did not wait for a dismissal. She bolted from her seat like it was on fire, grabbed her bag, and, just as she did after nearly every potions class, sprinted for the door. She was just out of range of any consequence by the time she heard Professor Snape slam said door behind her. She supposed that meant she’d read his request for her to leave correctly.

 

When nothing more occurred, Harriet sighed and turned away from the potions classroom. There was no window, but Harriet had learned her lesson once already that Snape could see her anyways. She did not want to linger, here, in the damp of what was obviously his domain. So, she adjusted her shoulder strap better over her shoulder, pulled her braid out from beneath it, and looked up to the corner of the hallway that would lead her back to her nice warm bed. Already she felt as though she was being watched!

 

Upon spotting Hermione, standing centered in Harriet’s route, Harriet jolted with the realization that it wasn’t Snape’s gaze she’d been feeling at all.

 

Hermione was stood still, staring behind Harriet to the recently shut door with slightly parted lips and a deeply furrowed brow. For once, Harriet did not turn around to attempt to figure out just what had caught the human’s attention. Instead she kept her eyes on Hermione, and so was able to spot when the girl’s attention turned back to Harriet by the way her mouth snapped shut and her eyes bore into Harriet’s own. Otherwise, Hermione’s analytical look did not change. Harriet could only imagine her own face was similarly quizzical, given who it was standing before her. Then, Hermione beckoned Harriet forward, and Harriet had no reason to refuse.

 

Harriet followed Hermione around the nearest corner in silence, and the next one after that. Hermione did not stop until they reached a side corridor which felt quiet, not in the sense of no sound coming in, but in the sense of no sound getting out. There were windows, too, a pleasant surprise this far below the main hallway, and Harriet meandered to a stop next to the nearest one. Outside, the moonlight shone on grass that was growing mere inches beneath the bottom edge of the window, putting the ground at roughly Harriet’s knee height. Not quite underground, but close enough for a dungeon apparently.

 

To Harriet’s right, Hermione was watching her again. Her expression was searching as always, and Harriet noted to herself that, oddly enough, she was pleased.

 

Hermione came to a stop directly in front of Harriet, a mere arms-length of space between them. Harriet had to crane her neck back slightly to meet Hermione’s eyes. They remained in their tableau long enough for Harriet to decide she quite liked how Hermione’s eyes were warm, even when they were furious.

 

“The levitation charm,” Hermione finally said. Harriet watched curiously when the strange human straightened slightly. “All the books I’ve found say that the incantation ‘wingardium leviosa’ can only levitate a single object at a time. But,” Hermione’s eyes slid to the left, finally leaving Harriet’s own, and Harriet felt oddly bereft at the loss. “I heard you. You saved my life, and I heard which spell you used. You levitated every single shard of mirror in that bathroom.” Now, Hermione’s hair was fluffing outwards, and Harriet smiled slightly as Hermione’s hands flew through the air in slashing gestures at nothing. “Which should not be possible! But I saw it! So, either you did something different,” a deep breath, “or the books are wrong. Now, which was it?”

 

When Hermione looked back to her, Harriet waited a moment to make sure Hermione was done speaking. Then, she pulled one braid up and over her shoulder. “I can’t know if I did something different,” she replied, “because I haven’t likely read all the books you have. So, I don’t know what I might be different from.”

 

Hermione’s eyebrows rose up around her hairline. Harriet released her braid and folded her hands into her armpits. Once again, she stood and waited, and Hermione in turn seemed to be battling some great internal pressure. Her skin was reddening, her face twisting, and that grand mane of curls was vibrating around the girl’s shoulders. Harriet was near ready to ask if Hermione was alright, when the girl exploded.

 

“Fine!” she snarled. Harriet took a step backwards and felt her eyes widen in surprise. This, this was new. Hermione followed her step back with one forward, leaving Harriet backed against one of the knee-to-ceiling windows. “Then I’ll just have to join you in the library until one of us figures out just how you managed to kill that troll. Seeing as we’re both high-achieving academics, I refuse to let this search get in the way of our grades, so we’ll just have to study together as well.” With that, Hermione sniffed grandly and gave Harriet back a bit of her personal space. Harriet felt rather like she’d just weathered a squall.

 

“You…wanna study with me?” she tentatively asked. Harriet wasn’t sure that ‘want’ was the correct word for Hermione’s…intentions. Quite frankly, Harriet wasn’t sure of any words that would be adequate for applying towards Hermione.

 

“Yes, well,” said Hermione, not quite meeting Harriet’s eyes, “you and I are the top of our year, and we’re both always in the library anyways. It only makes sense for us to, erm, work together.”

 

For a moment, neither of them moved. Harriet looked at Hermione, and Hermione looked at the floor. Something was happening, here, something was being communicated that Harriet could not even begin to understand. She couldn’t tell if she was meant to answer some unstated question, or provide some query of her own, or even if she was meant to leave or stay or spin around in circles. About the only thing she did glean from Hermione’s odd verbal squirming was that this girl wanted to study with her like Draco did. Harriet had no objections, she supposed, so long as Hermione kept her well fed with facts. If tonight was any indication of Hermione’s offerings then there should be no problem.

 

“Oh…kay,” Harriet said at long last.

 

“Oh good!” Hermione blurted. Immediately after, her face started to redden and Harriet wondered not for the first time just how humans didn’t burst from all the strange magics they kept inside and called ‘emotions’. “We should meet in the library, tomorrow!” Hermione continued, now relaxed and looking at Harriet head-on. Then, she turned slightly and began to walk, naturally drawing Harriet to follow and listen on. “That is to say, so that you can read the charms theory books I mentioned. We should really figure out how you accomplished multi-object levitation with a first-year spell.”

 

“I like the library,” Harriet muttered. To her astonishment, Hermione immediately brightened.

 

“Well of course you do, you practically live there. Not that I don’t understand!” she said, stumbling over her own words with haste. “If I could live in the library, I absolutely would.” Harriet perked up and grinned. Hermione mimicked her.

 

“What books do you like most?” Harriet asked. Reading was not a trait she’d found common in humans. Except, this was Hermione, who had something hungering in her eyes that reminded Harriet of her own fire. So that made sense.

 

“Oh, just about anything!” Hermione’s tone was rapturous, and Harriet watched in delight as Hermione’s spine straightened and her shoulders spread. It made her look so much taller, and Harriet dearly wished she could do the same. “Books can teach you so much, it’s a massive resource that means anyone can succeed, should they put their mind to it. And reading is, well, quite fun, I think.” Upon saying so, Hermione flushed and looked away from Harriet, to Harriet’s own mystified bemusement. “Anyways! Why were you in detention? You know, your academics would much better reflect your intelligence if you shifted your behavior.”

 

Harriet immediately pouted up at Hermione. Hermione was smiling, though, so Harriet could not feel any true annoyance. “Wasn’t my fault,” she whined. Hermione snorted.

 

“Sure,” said Hermione, crossing her arms. “And how -exactly- was it not your fault? Honestly, Harriet, you really need to...”

 

Hermione’s words faded into a pleasant crackling alongside Harriet, melding with the voice of the flames within her own belly. Harriet could tell already. Hermione, with all of her rapid-fire speech, was going to be a source of fascination for a very long time.

 

“By the way, do you know you smell quite terrible right now? And there’s something on your face, just there…”


	9. The Ignorant

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She finds out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Draco and Hermione keep surprising me. Harriet does not ever surprise me. She is an unchanging force of nature: flame. Fires are nothing if not predictable.

Hermione slotted into Harriet’s life with the sort of grace Harriet generally associated with something falling down the stairs.

 

“Harriet?”

 

“Mmm?” replied Harriet. She hadn’t even looked up from her notes, so common were Hermione’s comments, and continued to scribble out quotes from her current book on transfiguration principles. Today, as with every other day, Harriet was in the library. On a Thursday like today, Draco was off doing strange Draco things and so, usually, she’d be alone by now. The library wasn’t completely empty, just yet, but it was getting there. Even if all the other humans left, though, Harriet now knew with some certainty that, given the option, Hermione would stay.   

 

The only problem was that Hermione had quite a lot of questions Harriet did not know how to answer.

 

“What are you planning to do this weekend? We need to start on the third years texts. See, I asked an upperclassman and she said that the appendices have an informal set of the laws of charms as they apply to movement, and I want to do a comparison between the charms laws and Newtonian Physics. You do know your basic physics, don’t you? Oh, of course you don’t, you’re only eleven, I’ll go try to find something in the muggle-studies section…”

 

As Hermione began edging up out of her chair, Harriet squinted over at the girl and shook her head. “I know Newtonian stuff,” she said, watching Hermione both deflate and illuminate as she turned back to Harriet. “Why would I not? Is there an age limit?”

 

For a moment, Harriet watched curiously as it appeared Hermione was readying to chew through her own tongue. Then the girl calmed, and something not unlike a smile appeared at the edge of her mouth.

 

“Of course,” Hermione whispered. Then, she straightened her back and spoke normally to Harriet once again. “My apologies,” she said, “I really must stop assuming, well, what you do and do not know. You’re obviously very well read, it’s just that,” Hermione paused and raised a fingernail to her mouth, which she bit down on for only a moment. In the next second she had her hand shoved beneath her seat and a guilty look. “Right. I’m just not used to knowing anyone who can keep up with me. Academically, I mean. So I’ll, um. I’ll get those books tomorrow. Same time as usual?” Hermione stood up. The sun was beginning to set slightly, but there was still an hour or so until curfew, and so Harriet wasn’t sure why Hermione was leaving so soon.

 

“Why are you leaving?” she asked. Hermione stilled, one hand in her bag and another with a handful of quills.

 

“Well, we’re done, aren’t we?” Hermione slowly replied. Harriet looked away from Hermione’s searching gaze to check over the table. Indeed, all of their assignments were finished, and starting any more work on the levitation charm would have to wait given the rapidly approaching curfew.

 

“Ok. Wait for me.” With that, Harriet began to pack her notes up inbetween the pages of her textbooks as well.

 

The pleasure on Hermione’s face was so apparent even Harriet could understand it. Now, whatever had made Hermione so happy, that was quite beyond Harriet.

 

Hermione turned back to her textbooks and papers. “Anytime,” she whispered. Harriet did not react. As she’d already noted, Hermione was an awkward addition to Harriet’s life. Draco, Crab, and Boil had her spoiled for how simple humans could be if they put their minds to it. Although, the benefits of Hermione were very different than what Harriet got from Draco. For one thing, she’d never consider to ask one of the boys what she’d just decided to ask Hermione.

 

“You should, er, come with me to the forbidden third floor corridor on Saturday night,” she said, still packing away her things. Hermione was pretending to keep shuffling her notes, but Harriet could tell it was all bogus. She knew because she’d gotten up on the table to check. Hermione shoved at her shoulder and hissed until Harriet got back into her chair.

 

“Are you joking? Absolutely not, Harriet! How could you even consider something so dangerous? You know that Dumbledore forbade everyone from going there. I for one am not interested in going out of my way to get killed, or worse, expelled.” On the one hand, this was an entirely reasonable point. On the other hand, Harriet was super curious and she was gonna go with or without company.

 

“I’m gonna go with or without company,” she said. Hermione scowled.

 

“Well then I’m going to go tell Professor McGonagall so that she can stop you.” Hermione began more aggressively packing up her things into her bag.

 

“No you’re not. I saved your life. You owe me. So are we gonna work on the, um, third year appendices tomorrow?” Harriet bent down in her seat and picked up her shoes. She shoved them on and picked the folded heels out from under her feet. Hermione sighed and looked up to the vaulted ceiling.

 

“You promised you’d stop taking off your shoes whenever you sit, Harriet! This is a professional, academic environment. If you’re not going to wear your tie, please, at least wear your shoes!” Harriet absently brandished a thumb at her. It took her a moment to remember to point it upright to signify agreement.

 

Once the girls were packed, they walked together until they were back outside the library, and so able to speak without causing disruption. She’d followed Hermione’s bouncing hair all the way out, carefully ignoring Hermione’s third review of their study schedule for the next week. “And also,” Hermione continued, “you cannot hold the bathroom incident over my head forever, just so you know!”

 

“Watch me.”

*****

Now it was Friday, the library was truly empty. Books were floating far above Harriet’s head as they went back to their nooks and crannies. She could smell leather-bound paper and ancient dry stone and antique wood. Every bookshelf scraped the cathedral ceiling. Ladders for the top shelves were sliding themselves along each aisle at a meandering pace, and books would alight upon them to rest before they continued their journey. The shadows of the ladders rippled over the stones like fish beneath a stream. Windows nearly as tall as the bookshelves looked out on the gardens, now sharpened with shadow from the sunset and forest. It was like the library was simply one more greenhouse in the row, nurturing sprouts of ink and knowledge under golden dusk-light, hoping books would bloom. The desks and tables nestled in every spare space each had a unique and ever-changing vantage point to the ecosystem of the library. Harriet would sooner leap out one of the windows than light a single uncontrolled flame in this sanctuary.

 

Draco had left for the day. They’d spent a solid hour and a half working on the latest astronomy essay. This month they were studying the different types of stars. Eventually, after reenacting Pansy’s fall down the stairs a few times, he’d taken Crab and Boil to dinner and left her to her own devices. Hermione was scheduled to arrive any minute, now.

 

The chair Harriet was sitting on was normally sized, so naturally her feet were a solid six inches off the floor. Harriet took a moment to rest her forehead on the table and watch her feet kick back and forth. Her scar made the table feel knobby and uneven, but she knew the wood was perfectly smooth. It was her skin that was rough and ridged.

 

Just beyond her feet the chair legs across from her scootched out away from the table.

 

Harriet took her time sitting up. She was feeling very lazy today, like she’d eaten a sturdy log and now was just sitting and letting it warmly burn. The chair across from her, it appeared, had been sat upon by none other than the expected Hermione.

 

“Good afternoon,” Hermione muttered. Before her was a teetering pile of books. As Harriet watched, Hermione plucked one off the top, pushed it to Harriet’s side of the table, and then took the second book off the pile for herself to open.

 

This, as Harriet had learned over the past at-least-a-week, was typical Hermione behavior. And, also, quite efficient.

 

Hermione was rendered in red and gold. Beyond the stripes of her tie, her hair and eyes were, too, burning. This was because, to Harriet’s eyes, Hermione was framed entirely by the window behind her. All about her mane of rough curls was orange and red light that could just barely glow through like embers in coals. While the light was fading, the candelight would brighten to take its place, and so Hermione remained bright while the sky behind her went dark. Harriet imagined, oddly, how Hermione might see her, in that moment, were she to look up from her charms book. Harriet knew humans could see, but she also knew that humans almost never saw the same things she did.

 

“Oh,” said Hermione, interrupting Harriet’s musings. The girl then groaned. She raised her arms up above her head as far as they would go, bending her spine backwards for a moment before releasing her pose with a sigh. When her posture returned to neutral, she faced Harriet with a lazy smile. “I’ve been meaning to ask,” she said, “which book about you and your family would you consider to be most accurate? There are some publications, you know, such as _The Rise and Fall of the Dark Arts_ and _The Unforgivables and their History_ that are outright contradictory.”

 

Harriet had stopped listening long before Hermione ran out of steam. “There’s books about me here?” she quickly asked. Hermione frowned. Their eyes met.  

 

“Well,” she said, “yes.” Hermione cleared her throat and leaned forward. “I mean, I’m surprised you haven’t gone looking already. If I was you I’d want to know absolutely everything about it.” Hermione was staring at her. It reminded Harriet of how she looked at bugs she found in the garden.

 

“Of course I want to know,” Harriet whispered, leaning forward towards Hermione in turn. Beneath her, her palms left scorched prints on the chair seat Harriet’d planted them against. “But I didn’t know there were books about it! Do they have the Potter’s names in them? I haven’t been able to ask anyone since I got here what they were called. Or is there a book about you-know-who? Because I don’t know who and I have to know what he did to my forehead.”

 

Hermione’s mouth was slightly open. Her eyes had settled on Harriet’s own but they were glazed, glassy and unseeing. She looked like she’d just been told of some great tragedy that was about to befall her. Harriet twitched a little and grabbed a braid to fiddle with when one of Hermione’s hands slowly raised to cover her mouth.

 

Outside the windows, the sun finally dipped beneath the mountains of the distant forbidden forest. There was only candle light left, now, and the lantern at their table was flickering in Hermione’s eyes. Harriet hadn’t realized it had gotten so late. Hermione removed her hand and swallowed on nothing. She took a breath so deep that the candle danced above them, and Harriet felt the movement of the air sweep over her own flames as well. Hermione’s face was wretched. Harriet had no idea what her own face was doing.

 

“Your father’s name,” said Hermione, dragging out the words as if to torture Harriet. Or as if she were being tortured. “Was James Potter. Your mother’s name was Lily Evans Potter. She was muggle-born, like me. Do you know…” Hermione took a breath that vibrated through the air between them. Her whole chest shuddered. “What do you want to know?”

 

Harriet shrugged. “Umm,” she said, “I know they died. But that’s it, mostly.” Hermione winced and hunched over into her chair. Harriet watched curiously, on the edge of her seat over what Hermione would say next. It almost seemed more likely that Hermione would run away at this point, rather than keep talking, so strong was her expression of distress. Except, this was Hermione. Harriet had not seen fear in Hermione’s eyes since the troll in the bathroom.

 

Indeed, Hermione stayed. “Yes,” she whispered, “you-know-who…Voldemort…murdered them on Halloween night ten years ago.” Harriet did not move. She sat and watched Hermione with no expression in the island of candlelight. When her flames were dancing so fast, there was no need to move her flesh. And there was more to hear, yet, which would add to her burning. Harriet could taste that there was more for her to consume.

 

“How?” Harriet asked.

 

“The killing curse,” Hermione dutifully answered in a spit of words behind clenched teeth. “You-know-who killed your parents, and then he tried to kill you. But it didn’t work, and no one knows how it could be possible. See, no one’s supposed to survive the killing curse. The books say that you’re the only one who ever has. That’s where the scar…” Hermione trailed of with an inarticulate gesture. Harriet roughly translated it as an indication towards Harriet’s forehead. “The whole wizarding world reveres your name, the Girl who Lived, because you survived, and you ended the most horrible man anyone has ever feared.” It was a small miracle Hermione could not smell the smoke Harriet was producing.

 

“Why did he do it? Why won’t people say his name?”

 

Hermione straightened. “Because you-know-who wanted to kill all of the muggleborns. People like me, and your mother. Everyone was apparently too scared to so much as say his name, so they called him He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, or you-know-who.” Hermione shuddered again. Then, she leaned forward as far as her seat would let her, and looked Harriet straight in the eye. This time, Harriet knew without doubt that Hermione was looking right at her. “How did this happen? How is it that you, the person it matters most to, are the last to know? Why didn’t your family tell you?”

 

Harriet could only shrug.

 

“I don’t have any family. I’ve stayed with Petunia and Vernon for as long as I can remember. In Surrey.” For some reason, this only caused Hermione to frown further. The girl's whole body relaxed, and she let out a huge whoosh of stale air, but her eyes flickered down to her notes. Harriet, having known Hermione for over a week, could tell, with some certainty, two things from observation. First being that Hermione had been holding her breath. Second being that Hermione only looked downward with that slight frown between her eyes when she was thinking so deeply it would take her days to come to some conclusion.

 

Deep inside of Harriet, the flames that made up her being roared and tumbled like animals in a cage as she, too, began to wonder.

*****

Harriet was back in her abandoned classroom full of burned desks. She’d come straight here from the library. Walking had felt immaterial, like it was her body alone moving and she’d only noticed once she arrived.

 

Her toes knocked against a chunk of charred wood. On it was a sooty print of her own hand. She hadn’t realized her hand was so small until now, seeing it from a step away. She crouched down and wrapped her apparently tiny arms around her startlingly twiggy legs. She’d never felt small before she’d been wrapped up in skin and tossed into a world of human debts and histories.

 

Lily and James Potter. Lily and Petunia Evans. Harriet Jamie Potter. James and Jamie Potter.

 

Put out, every last one of them.

 

The one portal window in the corner of the classroom had gotten scorched during Harriet’s last visit. The light skipping off the lake was slicing itself to bits against the impressions of flame she’d left behind. Scooping up a handful of ashes, she walked over to the glass. She smacked her tiny hand against the glass, ash and all. Handful by handful, she rubbed away at the discoloration. The ashes she’d made slowly stripped it away.

 

Nothing was different. Her questions had been answered, but now she only had more. She’d been fed and it only made her bigger and hotter inside, readier to devour. Fires were lovely that way, she thought. The more they were fed the hungrier they became.

 

Voldemort sounded like he’d fuel the flames within her for years to come.


	10. The Spectator

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harriet goes to a quidditch match. And goes to see a girl about a dog.
> 
> Also she discovers the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So messy! School is picking up so I just have near no time to edit. Please, comment on any typos or errors or weak spots and I'll fix them right away. Thank you for reading!

Saturday dawned bright and early on Harriet’s very full-scheduled day. She was so excited! Harriet stood up on her bed and started jumping as high as she could. Her hair was unbound, and her glasses were hooked onto the window ledge, and all Harriet could see was the blurry sparks coming off her hair and winking out in the air alongside her. She loved the little embers and sparks she produced naturally. Spitting quickly to send a flurry of them into the air produced a gentle crackling noise to accompany the sound of her bouncing. 

“Oh my god I smell smoke! Wake up there’s smoke!” Harriet heard the sound of a pillow thumping against something. 

“Shut up, Lisa. It’s just the bitch-who-lived. Now let us sleep.”

“Oh my merlin, Mandy used a cuss!” Now, Harriet was hearing sighs and the sounds of the stupid humans that Harriet allowed to live with her getting out of bed. 

“I can’t believe this, Harriet. And on a Saturday, for Merlin’s sake!” That one sounded like Padma. Ah well. Harriet jumped up one last time and let herself fall back onto her rump. Her hair ties weren’t in her hair, and it didn’t look like they were on the little table next to her bed. She groped about the window for her glasses and came back with her spectacles and a large feather. She’d been delivered a present! She’d have to get some meat from the lunch table to set out. Harriet put on her glasses and looked around, realizing immediately that her hair ties had been on the little table the entire time. Eyesight was a real charm and a half. 

Harriet went back to jumping as she braided her hair. It was a bit sootier than usual, probably because of her new eating habits. She’d never been so well fed. Outside of her window, the sun was just peeking over the horizon and the light was a pleasant warmth that had her burning just a tad brighter. Harriet stopped bouncing just long enough to put on her shoes and then launched herself back up to button up her shirt and twist her skirt around so it was facing the right way. She loved how jumping on the bed made the grey pleats fluff outwards. 

One last jump, and Harriet launched herself off the bed and through her curtains. She heard several screams and shouts as she did so, but she was already streaking out the door as fast as her wonderful feet would carry her. Running excited Harriet like nothing else, getting her heart thumping in rapid tap-taps in a way no meal or book quite managed. It made her almost understand why humans were so arrogant. So much of their body was suited to killing other creatures. If she wasn’t something so elementally superior, she’d have believed in the instinctual ‘top predator’ status her body reeked of. Of course, she had enough memories from the body’s time before she’d inhabited it to know that this body would be worthless without her. It used to burn and scrape and generate pain signals almost constantly. The thing didn’t even have thoughts and feelings, but Harriet still got the sense from the shell’s memories that there had been a sense of inefficiency, or deficiency to it’s everyday existence. 

Yes, Harriet was the best thing to ever happen to humanity. Without fire, none of the human life and magic in this castle would be possible. 

Harriet banked her flames high with every beat of her feet against the blackened stones. She had hours yet before she’d need to meet Draco, and she was not going to waste even a moment!  
***** 

Running down a hallway, Harriet paused at an open door. It appeared the charms classroom was open. An oddity, as Harriet was fairly certain there were no classes on Saturdays. Peeking her head in, Harriet was confused to see that the room was empty but for Professor Flitwick, who was sitting by one of the massive windows on a floating cluster of velvety cushions. He glanced up and Harriet flinched back so that the doorframe shielded her body.

“Ms.Potter!” said Professor Flitwick, sitting upright. “How lovely to see you! I was meaning to check in with you. Do you have time to step in for a quick chat?” Flitwick glanced at her with a whiskery smile and, with a wave of his wand, floated another cluster of cushions to hang in the air adjacent to his own. They looked extremely warm and cozy and yummy. 

Wordlessly, Harriet stepped forward into the room and approached the pillow island. Flitwick’s smile grew, and Harriet allowed a smile to appear on her own face in proportion to her professor’s. Reaching the cushions Flitwick was gesturing her towards, Harriet planted her palms onto the plush surface and hoisted herself up. The pillows did not so much as waver while she got herself settled. 

“Very good, very good,” said Flitwick in his usual cheery tone. She’d never been so close to him, but now she was closer she could see that as well as black sclera and slightly pointed ears, his canines were a tad sharper than most humans had. Flitwick’s smile relaxed over said canines, however, as he leaned forward and folded his hands over one crossed knee. “While we’re not in class, would mind if I call you by your first name? You may call me Filius, if you’d so like. Right now, I’m your head of house rather than your professor, and I’d like you to feel comfortable.”

“Filius,” said Harriet, rolling the name on her tongue. After a moment, she nodded. “I like Harriet better than Ms.Potter,” she said.

“It is a very nice name. So, Harriet, why don’t you tell me about how your year is progressing.” Filius looked at her openly, and not expectantly. He looked slightly drowsy, relaxed even, yet attentive all at once. Harriet leaned back onto her own pillows and thought over her answer. She’d not been asked anything of the like, before. 

“Hogwarts,” she started, then paused. “There’s so much food.” Filius looked confused, so Harriet hastened to clarify her thoughts into something a mortal might understand. “All the good food, it smells good and it makes me hungry. I like it. And your owl was lovely. Owls are amazing. They’re much better than humans.” Filius snorted. Harriet grinned.

“Ah yes, Matilda. She’s been my regular post-owl for years now. Do you own an owl, Harriet?” 

Now quite confused, Harriet tilted her head and frowned. “No,” she said. “How can someone own an owl?” 

“That’s a very good question,” said Filius, nodding and smiling wider. “Some people would say that you cannot, that owning an owl as if they’re a commodity is unrealistic, or even cruel. Others would say the opposite, that owls necessitate ownership, by way of being purchasable from a shop that raises and cares for them. What do you think?”

Harriet hummed. “No,” she decided. “No, you can’t own another living thing like an owl. I think that living things must be gifts.”

Filius raised an eyebrow. “Gifts?”

“Gifts,” said Harriet, nodding decisively. “If an owl decides to gift me with time, or feathers, or even its whole life, then that’s fair and I’ll give gifts in return as best I can. But if the owl says no, then it should be left alone. Like, my blankets don’t get a say in if I have them. Owls do.”

“Hmm,” Filius hummed in turn. “Your reasoning is sound. Yet, I cannot help but notice that it is based on assumptions and ideals that are not universal. How are you getting along with your classmates, Harriet?”

Harriet picked up one braid from her collarbone and slowly smoothed her thumb over the folds of hair, one section at a time. When she shrugged, Filius sighed and leaned slightly forward. His eyes had quite a lot of crinkles around them. Like Ollivander and the old man with the lemon drops, Filius seemed quite kind and fair. Perhaps, Harriet noted, male beings grew kind as they grew old. 

“You know,” he said after a long moment, “making friends was very hard for me when I was a young Ravenclaw. I’ve found that people are all very different, and often those differences are hard to identify, much less understand.”

“Was it because you’re not human?” Harriet asked. Filius’s eyebrows shot upwards on his forehead, and Harriet picked up her other braid to fiddle with as well. Had she been wrong about his species? She didn’t think humans had many of the traits he did. 

“Yes,” said Filius, slowly nodding once. “My Goblin heritage was a large part of why it took me some time to make friends. More than looking different, my background left me understanding things differently than my peers in many a subtle way. Of course,” Filius said with more of his usual cheer, “the friends I made who worked to understand me, and I them in return, have proven to be life-long friends. Just because we are different has not made our friendship lesser. I would argue that the understanding we have of each others differences is a blessing.”

“I’m different,” Harriet blurted. “I look normal, but I don’t understand anyone. I like books, and owls, and food because they aren’t all confusing. But I need humans, too. And I don’t understand why.”

“Oh, Harriet,” Filius sighed. “We all need companionship. I, too, often wished for a life of seclusion, but loneliness is a hunger that cannot be escaped. That is not something I understood until I was much older than you.”

“Fed things just get hungry again.”

“Yes. You’ll always need people. Hopefully, you will find that lifelong friendships are possible for everyone who is willing to return the gift they are being given. That has been my experience.”

Language, as something Harriet had inherited, and then used almost never, was often beyond her. The yelps of a human seemed quite similar, to her, to the screeches of an owl or the grinding of stone over stone. It was a noise which signified, nothing more. Here, though, Harriet thought that speakers of certain complex tongues may just be onto something, and were not just making up extra words for the sake of showing off their mouths and teeth. She nodded slowly, once, as he had done, then looked up to Filius and, in one sentence, said two things. 

“Friendships are fair.”

Both hypothesis and test of hypothesis in one. Nothing about what humans called friendships had to be fair. However, perhaps you could use the word friendship to specifically mean that, if a connection was not fair, then it could not be a friendship. And, if language could actually be used to convey a meaning as Harriet knew it, then, just maybe, a creature of another species could understand how she saw the world. Even if only for a moment. 

“Well,” Filius chuckled, black-shine eyes on the window, “good ones are. Somehow, I don’t think an unfair relationship will ever be a problem for you, though.”

Did that mean Harriet was correct? Maybe Filius had understood her, and this was his response. Or, maybe, Harriet only thought so because it was in her nature to interpret words in such a fair, defined way. 

Maybe words would only ever be so binding to their meanings for a creature like her, who was fair by definition. 

Maybe creatures who were born, who invented languages, did not create words with meanings like hers in mind.

Harriet vigorously shook her head until her braids flipped out of her hands and fell behind her. “I give back what I receive exactly equally. It might be different, but it’s always fair.”

“Fair for whom, I wonder?” Filius muttered. Harriet’s thoughts exactly. A spark formed in Harriet's throat, right were she had read the voice-box resided. She'd never given it much thought, before. Yet, now, the little lump held all of her hopes.

Apparently oblivious to Harriet’s musings, Filius moved on. Which was good, because Harriet was quickly losing hold of whatever linguistic flourish had led to possible understanding between her and this part-goblin-part-other. “I’m very glad to have you in my house, Harriet,” said Filius. “You’ve quite the wit, and I cannot imagine that I am the only person in this castle who will appreciate it. I’ve noticed you sitting with Ms.Granger in my class, and with Mr.Malfoy during some meals, and I’m glad you’ve people to connect with, even if your housemates don’t quite understand you just yet.”

Harriet frowned. She did not recognize either of those names. From context, she could guess that Ms.Granger meant Hermione, but she sat near many people at lunch, and any one of them might be Mr.Malfoy. In short, it was too many words to bother with. She elected to ignore Filius’s comment and stand up from the pillow island.

“Can I take a pillow?” she asked. Filius huffed and shook his head sadly.

“Conjured, I’m afraid. They’ll turn back into air by the end of the day. If you’d like to take one, I’d be glad to hear about any observations you make on the de-conjuration process. It’s sixth-year material, but I’ve never much abided barriers on curiosity. The worst case is you’re wrong, after all, and that’s what I’m here to help with.”

The pillow in Harriet’s hands felt normal at first touch, but deeper down Harriet could feel that somehow this pillow was warmer than it should be. Now that she knew somewhat why, and what would happen in a few hours, she was even more excited to eat it. Air was just as flammable as a pillow.

In an ideal world, Harriet would have eaten the pillow right then and there. However, in this world, Filius would not understand her actions and would likely try to kill her or control her. 

Yet, even as Harriet shuddered to imagine the cold suffocation of water, she smiled to know that maybe, someday, through words or otherwise, someone would understand. And then she could have her people and eat them, too.

*****  
Harriet had not wasted a single moment of her morning, which was why she was currently sprinting towards the front entry hallway with roughly two minutes to spare. She’d curled up in the library with a stack of wood from some broken-down desks and a book on fungi and their various adaptations in nature. Apparently, in the north there was something called caribou lichen that could be made into medicine. She’d gone through half her woodpile wrapped up in the world of organic diversity and only noticed the time when she took a break to eat a large plank of pine.

The staircase Harriet was riding came to a grinding halt against the grand staircase a solid five seconds after Harriet had already leapt over the gap between them. Her landing was less graceful than she’d like, but she only did one summersault so she called it good enough. She ran down the rest of the stairs two at a time and skid to a stop in front of Draco and his large children. Harriet was beginning to suspect they were siblings or somehow bound to each other. She hadn’t yet ruled out symbiosis, like the lichens in the book she’d been reading. 

“About time, Harriet! You’re lucky I waited for you. Now come on, we must get decent seats. It’s our first Hogwarts match after all. Here, Crabbe, put it on her.” Crab reached over and put a green and silver striped length of cloth around her neck a few times. Harriet had made sure to stick a hand up between the cloth and her neck in case she needed to burn it away. Humans were cruel, predatory mammals. She wouldn’t be surprised if one of them had decided to strangle her or otherwise extinguish her. As she’d learned from Hermione, it wouldn’t be the first time. Nothing happened except the four of them walking out the front door so Harriet tentatively removed her hand and resumed her normal walking posture. 

Harriet, Draco, Crab, and Boil joined a steady flow of generally larger humans towards a massive and seemingly useless structure. It was circular, had no roof, had grass growing inside, and did not appear to have a single fireplace. Honestly, Harriet wasn’t sure what she’d been expecting. Draco led her to a tower with green cloth and she followed him up a spiraling staircase with windows lacking glass and dust and sawdust everywhere. The old wood creaked under her feet and Harriet felt her mouth heat up. She licked her lips and tried to focus on Draco’s slicked-back hair. It was marginally less flammable, or at least less enjoyable to set on fire. 

Harriet’s feet were starting to smolder around her toes by the time they finally reached the top. Crab and Boil each went to one side of Draco and Harriet, and they walked down a slight slant until they were at the inner rim of the circle. Here, Draco ushered Crab down the length of the bench next to them, and then her, only to follow dragging Boil behind him. They sat and then basically nothing happened. Draco kept wiggling like everything was suddenly fascinating, but Harriet for once felt as bored as Crab and Boil looked. There were people sitting down on all the benches behind them, being loud and yelling and waving bits of colored cloth in the air, and Harriet would rather be just about anywhere else in Hogwarts right now. She’d prefer Defense Against the Dark Arts, and she’d only attended that once. Professor whatsit really made her throat move the wrong way, like she was a volcano but worse. 

Maybe puking up magma would get her out of this. Or, maybe she could just leave. Harriet stood up to get out of there just as Draco, and everyone else, did the exact same thing except they also started screaming. Harriet fell against Crab with burning fingers and braids. The boy winced away from her and she flinched away. Now, Crab was looking at the people behind them and growling and Draco was screaming and then a bunch of humans on bits of wood flew past them. They flew. With bits of wood between their legs. Harriet hadn’t even known humans could do that! She’d never seen a human fly before, certainly, and they had nothing in common with birds. She supposed the wood bits must be like cars, except they made you fly as well as move fast. The thing about cars was, and Harriet knew this from Vernon trying to run her over, that cars kill people. Like a lot. So, with humans on tiny flying cars made of wood, they were extra likely to die. 

Harriet sat back down. She wanted to see what would happen. 

Over the next hour, Harriet was not disappointed. Two red-headed humans in red clothing were using metal bats to thwack flying metal balls into the other flyers and attempt to knock them off their brooms. It was the most hilarious thing Harriet had ever seen in her life. Draco wasn’t the only one making noise, now. Harriet laughed and shrieked her head off at every moment as the players flipped about, nearly ran into the walls of the circle, and tried as hard as possible to steal things from each other, hit each other, hit balls at each other, and generally murder each other in midair. It was like looking at a bunch of insects in a box fighting each other for no reason. Living things were so weird, like that. Programmed to hurt things for no reason. It was foreign to Harriet, but in this instance, surprisingly entertaining. It was like a window into human life she’d never had before. Cruelty, she’d understood at the Dursley’s, but this? Pointless, impersonal violence? This warranted further study. She’d have to find some books on it as soon as they’d finally killed each other off. Then, she looked to her right and saw Draco. He was flushed and smiling, waving his hands in the air and yelling. His jacket looked very thick and warm, and his eyes looked warm too even though blue and grey were supposed to be cool colors. 

Draco had said he wanted to do this in a year. If he died, who was going to feed her potions facts? Or keep Crab and Boil alive? Maybe she shouldn’t let him fly. But then, if Harriet wasn’t allowed to burn, then she’d be miserable. She’d be nothing if she wasn’t a fire. She shuddered in her seat at the thought of being even the slightest bit similar to the thing that used to live in her body. No, Harriet decided, she couldn’t make Draco not play quidditch if that was human nature, to fly and kill each other. What she could do was make sure that no one ever died in a quidditch match. That way, Draco would be safe and he could be as violent as he wanted without getting special treatment that was unfair. 

Harriet watched the rest of the game with silent intensity. Crab patted her shoulder a few times, and she patted him back, but she would not look away. She kept her wand at the ready until the humans returned to the ground. Wingardium Leviosa, after all, took a few critical seconds to say. A few seconds was all it took for a human to die. She’d read about it.  
*****  
Harriet spent the rest of her daylight hours in the library. Apparently, the rest of the castle was celebrating something or other. Draco had invited her, but she had declined. She wanted to research good charms for making a human body float quickly without anything breaking. She still hadn’t found anything by the time curfew started and it was time to pick up Hermione. Harriet put her books away and snuck her way out the door past the librarian, who was sorting books from the book return. Harriet was short enough that her head didn’t so much as peek over the top of the desk, so she escaped into the castle proper easily. 

Harriet really did love the castle after curfew. The lack of people made it very relaxing. The corridors all darkened a tad as it was left up to the torches to light them if there were torches at all, and it seemed like every spider in the castle would come to skitter about. Drafts would make tapestries move and suits of armor could be heard clunking down hallways from floors away. The haunting echoes of metal scraping stone could subside to silence with a simple turn about a corner, thanks to the acoustics of the high arched ceilings clouded over with night shadows. Harriet fit in well in this night realm. She was bright, in such dark spaces, warm in so much cold. And the stars seemed brighter the darker it was around her. Nighttime in the castle made her burn hot and steady, with embers that she could blow into the air to watch blink out against the backdrop of dark stone and empty corridor. 

It took Harriet a decent ten minute mosey to reach her goal. Gryffindor Tower was guarded by a woman in a fluffy pink dress. She glared at Harriet when she approached. Harriet appraised her for a moment. Nice brushstrokes, she thought, but the background was poorly done given the color scheme of the subject. Harriet picked a spot particularly devoid of beauty and started knocking as loud as she could. She did not stop. It took near two minutes for a red-headed boy to throw the portrait doorway open. His hair was very fluffy and he was wearing a bathrobe over pajamas with a shiny badge pinned to the left breast. He looked furious, like Petunia when she was about to do something really bad. Harriet didn’t so much as hesitate, she just turned and ran. 

The boy shouted behind her to stop, even used her surname several times, so Harriet ran faster. Whatever this tall boy would do to her, she did not want to know. Even if he was something called a ‘prefect’, whatever that meant. 

Harriet waited for several hours in an old classroom, eating bits of wood, before she decided to try again. She approached the furiously glaring portrait on quiet feet and raised her hand to knock again just as the portrait swung open yet again. Stood there was Hermione in all of her red-flannel-pajama-clad glory. 

“Harriet! What were you thinking? Percy recognized you, you know! He said he’s going to report you! I knew you’d come back, so I asked the Fat Lady to let me know when you arrived so that you wouldn’t get in twice as much trouble. Honestly Harriet, what on earth are you thinking, breaking curfew and making noise outside of someone else’s common room? Do you want to get detention?” Hermione finally had to stop to take a breath. Harriet took her chance.

“No, Hermione,” she said, “I don’t want detention. Bleck. I told you. I want to go explore the forbidden third floor corridor with you. You’re here now, so come on. I told you we’re doing this, I know I did, and I know you heard me ‘cuz you yelled at me.” Hermione was getting very red in the face and her hair was puffing up around her face. 

“I am not coming with you, Harriet! Because this is a horrible idea that is going to get us both in trouble. I shouldn’t even be speaking to you now!” As she spoke, Hermione had stepped forward to whisper directly into Harriet’s face. 

“Ok. I guess it’s y-“ Harriet was interrupted by a sharp snap noise. Hermione whipped around to see what the noise was and gasped before looking back at Harriet with bugging-out eyes and pale cheeks. While they were speaking, the portrait had swung shut. And the Fat Lady was gone. “Hermione, what’s wrong?” asked Harriet. Hermione looked shocked and scared. Perhaps the Fat Lady was her friend?

“I can’t get back into the common room. Not with the Fat Lady gone. I’m stuck out here! Oh no,” she moaned, “I’m going to be in so much trouble! Do you think she’ll come back?” Harriet was just about to answer when footsteps began echoing behind them. They didn’t sound metallic, they sounded like Filch. Even Harriet knew getting caught by him was a bad idea. She’d heard whispers about him using thumb-screws. “Oh no,” Hermione whimpered again. Harriet did just as she’d instinctively done the first time she came to Gryffindor Tower. She grabbed Hermione by the wrist and then she ran for it.


	11. The Doorman

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harriet and a girl see a dog about a dog.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Riddle is from THE RIDDLES OF KING HEITHREK
> 
> I have no editor-in-chief, so lemme know where I fucked up.  
> But also please let me know what you like so that I can do it more.

Behind her, Hermione was panting, barely keeping up. She kept stumbling and yanking on Harriet’s hand, but they could not stop, not with Filch’s mumbling echoing behind them. Harriet made Hermione keep going until the sound faded away before she yanked them to the side into a broom closet and shut the door. She drew her wand and, instinctively, lit a tiny flame at its tip so that they could see. Keeping the flame small was necessary, as Hermione would need air in the enclosed space. Especially given the way she was panting and gulping in all the air like she owned it. She was also glaring at Harriet, but she didn’t bother to speak for a good few minutes. When she did, she was visibly less-than-pleased.

“Just why," she growled, "are you so fixated on going to the third floor corridor, anyways? It’s not just forbidden, it’s dangerous! What on earth about ‘forbidden’ sounds enticing to you?” Hermione finally managed to stand up straight, but she quickly backed away into the shelves opposite Harriet, warily eyeing the flame. “How did you make that? It feels hot!” 

“Of course it’s hot. It’s a fire.” Harriet waved the wand around pointedly. Hermione jerked back further into the wall, if that was possible. Then, she clenched her teeth.

“Harriet.” Hermione was glaring at Harriet, now, through the edges of the flame. The light made her brown eyes look nearly red. "This is ridiculous!" she said. "Do you see, yet, just why exactly this was an utterly stupid idea? Why do you even want to go somewhere that is forbidden? It's dangerous, Harriet! The Professors put the rules into place for a reason!" Harriet's temper flared. In response, the light in the closet got brighter as her wand-tip flame also flared. "And now we're out after curfew! Oh," the anger fell from Hermione's tone, replaced by a sort of muted panic. "We're going to be in so much trouble! Perhaps, if we turn ourselves in, Professor McGonagall will understand that this was all a mistake." 

“No,” Harriet blurted. Hermione's eyes jerked back to Harriet's own. "We're not going to a professor. We're not caught yet, so we're not in trouble yet. And, also, I'm going to the third floor corridor. I have to." Hermione stared at Harriet with a rapidly reddening face. Her eyes were reflecting the fire lit between them, and Harriet tensed to launch herself out of the closet and run for it.

"Why." Hermione's question was not so much asked as it was demanded. Harriet resented the tone. She huffed out a breath of almost-smoke, but only out of mild annoyance. Hermione, for all she was being weirdly controlling about it, was asking Harriet about Harriet's thoughts and ideas. It was hard to be angry about someone being respectful enough to bother asking her a question.

"I have to go, because it's forbidden," said Harriet. Hermione's nostrils flared. "Anything could be in there, and the Professors made a rule because they think they can. But, but they don't own me! I'm curious, and I heard what the risks are, and I'm okay with taking them on to feed my curiosity. No one gets to punish me for that, that's unfair. I got invited into this castle, and I'm gonna go where I want, when I want, because it doesn't hurt anybody but me. So it's no one else's choice but mine!"

Hermione was scowling, still, but her eyes were simmering to a lower burn. “Then why," Hermione whispered, "exactly, Harriet Potter, did you have to bring me? I don’t want to be here. I’ve said it repeatedly, but you just won’t listen for some reason. It’s not like this is a good idea, but it’s not like I can help, either! You killed the troll, not me. I just hid in the corner and screamed. And, you obviously are just as smart as me, so there's nothing you could possibly need me for anyways! Why would you want me to come somewhere dangerous with you when, compared to you, I’m such a…a…stupid scaredy-cat!” Hermione's voice was shrill, and Harriet guessed that Hermione would certainly have shouted all of this, if she could. As it was, Hermione ended up biting down on her own lip instead.

Harriet was beyond confused, now. Hermione was talking weird nonsense, babbling about things that, so far as Harriet could tell, were completely unrelated to their evening and the third floor corridor. Harriet was quite ready to ignore her altogether and leave for the corridor on her own.

Except.

Hermione looked hurt. And, Harriet could only assume based on how many things were in this closet, that she'd been the one to hurt Hermione. She didn't know how she'd hurt Hermione, but she did think she could, maybe, help. After all, Harriet quite liked being respected enough to have her questions answered and questions asked in turn. Hermione could not be so different from Harriet that she wouldn't appreciate the same.

“You’re not a scaredy-cat,” Harriet said, as calmly and firmly as she dared. Given that she didn't know exactly what a scready-cat was. She could guess. “Or stupid. And I want you to come because…I'm not sure. Also, you shouldn't compare yourself to me. That doesn't make sense, to compare us.” It really didn't. Still, in human terms, "You're the best human I've ever met."

Hermione's shoulders had finally relaxed, and the flame-light revealed a healthy flush over her cheeks that hadn't been there before. "That's, oh," Hermione mumbled something Harriet couldn't catch, then, clearly, "Thank you, Harriet." Harriet smiled in response. Hermione really was quite wonderful, appreciating just how much work Harriet put into the words she picked out for Hermione to hear. "But," Hermione continued, "what do you mean ‘I'm not sure’? How can you drag me out of bed and not even know why?” Hermione's hands were planted on her hips and she was pouting in a way that was probably meant to be scary. The way her hair fluffed out and her eyes flashed made up for the pout, so far as Harriet was concerned.

“Because I don’t know. I don’t know why I want you to come! I just asked and then I didn’t want you to say no and I don’t know why. I don’t need company so I don’t know why, I’m not supposed to want company, I’m not!” to Harriet’s horror, she could feel her eyebrows screwing up and her eyes getting hot without her permission. She slapped her hands over her face and ducked her head in case any sparks were showing. Deep breathing usually calmed her down when this happened, but this time she had barely begun when a hand settled onto her shoulder and she nearly burned off her own tongue. 

“Ok. It’s…fine. I understand. Why you asked me, I mean. After all, of course you’d ask, we’re friends. Right?” Harriet looked up to see Hermione looking down at her with shiny brown eyes. They looked oak-colored. Harriet smiled a little bit. Hermione had really nice eyes, and Harriet would eat them in a heartbeat. She supposed she could call that being friends, for now. Harriet grabbed the door knob with her free hand.

“So, what’s your choice?” she asked. Hermione rolled her eyes and then looked back to Harriet. Her examination was spine-tingling. Harriet half expected her to look and see the flame inside. Then Hermione put her own hand over Harriet’s on the door knob and pushed the door open.

“Come on, the faster you get to look at your corridor, the faster I can go back to bed.” Hermione strode down the hallway and Harriet jogged to keep up. Hermione’s legs were so much longer than hers. "And we'd better not get caught!"

Together, the two walked the rest of the way silently. Hermione seemed to be either riding some sort of wave of bravery or holding in some other emotion Harriet was not human enough to detect. Harriet, would ask, but she found that she didn’t want to disturb the night air unduly. The moon wasn’t providing more than the barest glints of light. The portraits and shadows were interchangeable, flickers of movement out of the corner of Harriet’s eye. There was nothing here besides Harriet and Hermione in the dark.

Well, them and whatever was in the broom closet just to the left of the entrance to the third floor corridor. The door banged into its own frame, rattling against the lock and Hermione jerked back against Harriet with a muffled gasp. Harriet absently caught her and peered around her shoulder to watch the door rhythmically bang and shudder. Now that they’d stopped Harriet could hear moaning of some sort. Maybe it was Peeves? Except Harriet thought he was still a few floors up. 

“Hey, Her-“ Hermione slapped a hand over her mouth. She shook her head at Harriet and walked them over to the third floor corridor entrance with a flushed face and a deep scowl. “Wait, what is that? Is it a magical creature?”

“No. Now come on, take your look and then lets leave as quickly as possible.” Hermione whispered into her ear with a quick glare back at the thumping door. 

“Can we look in the thumping door next?”

“Absolutely not.” 

“Well, if you’re sure. I’m gonna open the door.” And so Harriet grabbed the forbidden door handle and yanked. Nothing happened. “Oh. It’s locked. I can fix that.” Harriet raised a hand to burn the door down.

“Oh! You can perform the ‘Alohomora’ charm, too? Let’s see it then.” Hermione stood back and honest-to-goodness tapped her foot. Harriet doubly wanted to burn down the door, now, but she wasn’t quite prepared to let a challenge like that go unanswered when it came from a human girl who thought that they were academic rivals. Harriet begrudgingly got her wand out of her robe pocket.

“Alohomora!” Harriet intoned with as much inner burning as possible. It took a lot out of her, and she’d be hungrier than usual tomorrow, but she did it! The lock on the door clicked, and she realized that Hermione had just taught her a charm for unlocking doors without fire. She was overjoyed. She’d never be trapped in the cupboard under the stairs ever again. “Hermione, I’m gonna find you a really cool book and give it to you.”

“Oh,” Hermione looked pleased for a moment, and then playfully wagged a finger in Harriet’s face, “you’d better! For all this trouble!” then she laughed, a happy little noise. Harriet beamed, grabbing the door handle and swinging the door wide. 

The two girls looked around the open doorway into a dark room with some big, dark thing right in the middle. A bit of it looked shiny in the torchlight from the hallway. Other than the light behind them nothing illuminated the corridor beyond, although it appeared more like a room than a corridor of any sort. Then, the central mass began to shift, and separate into one main mass with three smaller masses atop it. The shadow object rippled to Harriet’s eyes. Something made a clicking noise against the stones real quick all at once, like a bunch of pens tapping the floor at almost the same time. A growling noise echoed past them. Within the light closer to the now open doorway, the three smaller top-masses moved forward into view. The three black shadows were heads, three heads each of a massive black dog, taller than Uncle Vernon’s car and with three sets of bared, glinting teeth and reddish, mad eyes. 

The central and leftmost head growled and released foam from between vibrating lips. The clicking noises continued, and now Harriet could see the claws tapping against the floor as the beast stepped towards them. The rightmost head, though, was looking into Harriet’s eyes. It wasn’t growling, but it had its teeth showing in a still grimace. The head did not move forward with its fellows, rather retreating away from Harriet towards the main body. It looked less ready to scare Harriet, and more like how Harriet felt when it was being backed into her cupboard. Like it was ready to lash out if Harriet came closer. She took a step back, but let her flames rise up behind her eyes. The head opened its mouth and laid its ears flat. It would bite her, and Harriet would burn it. Like an acid and a base, the outcome was predictable given contact. If they wanted to avoid an explosive reaction, then they needed to leave. The central and left head did not agree, apparently. Hermione twitched violently a split second before the majority of the dog lunged towards them. Two sets of teeth burned themselves into Harriet’s vision, but only one set of eyes did the same. 

Harriet and Hermione moved as one, grabbing the door and yanking it back into its frame. They were barely in time, and the entire stone wall shook when the beast slammed into the closed portal they’d braced their tiny, fleshy bodies against. Harriet didn’t know what it would do to her to be eaten. She was beyond thankful she hadn’t needed to find out. 

“Oh dear merlin,” said Hermione, sliding down the now shut door to sit on the ground, “that’s a three-headed dog. I didn’t know those were real.” Hermione stared out into the empty hallway. Harriet actually checked real quick to make sure it was truly empty, her stare was so focused. “I guess we learned something after all.”

“Now can we open the-“

“No!”  
*****  
Harriet had returned Hermione to her dormitory with no further fanfare for the night and managed to be asleep in bed by 12:30AM. No explanation for the shaking door had been given, for all Harriet’s bother. Hermione had just told her to wait until she was older. Well, Harriet thought age was a silly human quirk only useful for creatures with an extremely narrow worldview. 

The doorknob to the blue place Harriet lived loved riddles. It always made Harriet answer one before she could enter, but sometimes she stuck around to try and answer more, or even ask some. The door hadn’t gotten one wrong yet. It may have given unexpected answers, but then, so did Harriet.

“Good morning, door! Riddle, please,” she requested in her most polite voice. She also banged her teeth together a few times. It made a knocking noise and looked like what the door knob did when she got an answer right. She figured that knocking one jaw bone up into your face was polite for doors. It was like opening and closing your face. 

“Harshly he clangs, on hard paths treading; which he has fared before; Two mouths he has, and mightily kisses; and on gold alone he goes.” Harriet laughed. The door must be bored today. It barely even gave her a riddle.

“Light, doorknob!” The doorknocker frowned for a moment, like it usually did with her. 

“Light makes no sound.” It answered. It rarely did this for other students at the door, but it seemed to ask Harriet questions often.

“Of course light makes sound. Haven’t you ever listened to a fire?” The doorknocker seemed to sigh for a moment, before swinging the entry-way wide. “Goodnight!” she called back behind her. The common room was empty but for the ashes of a long-extinguished flame and the books on near every hard surface but the floor. Harriet meandered by the frozen wasteland of an ended day. She liked this cold realm of moonlight, for the space it gave her, but she knew she had to keep walking anyways. It was time for her to go to bed. 

As she crawled under the covers and tucked her chin into a clump of ashes, Harriet tuned out the breathing of her dorm-mates to focus on the air flowing through her window. The night air was pure, cleaner and richer than anything Harriet had ever tasted before she came to Hogwarts. Her flames settled into a steady flicker within her. She wished, as she closed her eyes, that her flames were free once again, so that the light within her might burn out the entirety of Hogwarts, leaving nothing but her flames within their castle hearth, free and fed in the Scottish air.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The answer to the riddle should be "a goldsmith's golden hammer"  
> but Harriet just thinks a bit differently, and she's not strictly wrong so the door kind of puts up with her.


	12. The Reflection

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Christmas is here! No one told Harriet.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ooooh writing this makes procrastination so much easier. It's the perfect excuse to avoid homework!

Harriet awoke on Saturday morning to complete silence. Unnatural silence. Alarmed by any sudden change, she bolted upright and threw her curtains open only to be proven correct. She was the only person in the room, and the girls had not slept in their beds. Harriet threw herself out from under the covers and didn’t bother putting on shoes. She sprinted for the doorway, planning a route through each place generally guaranteed to always have some student or another hanging about.

As she ran, from common room to hallway, no one bumped into her. No one was walking around enjoying the day. Harriet shuddered to think that perhaps they were out in the snow and would try to make her join them. Harriet had not gone outside in near a month now. Snow was not getting near her. No way. Still, as harmlessly hilarious as everyone going outside into the white death muck would be, something in Harriet’s burning core told her that it was not true. It was too quiet, and there would be someone inside, and the beds would have been slept in.

Eventually, Harriet skidded around the corner, right into the open doorway to the main hall, and immediately froze. The hall looked nothing like she'd ever seen it before. Gone were the five big tables to make way for one smaller table perfectly centered in the great hall, mostly populated by teachers with the minimal exceptions of less than a dozen students. There were perhaps seven in total. Some were fairly old, and could be either a young teacher or an old student. Then, the old white-haired man with the candies spotted her and waved her in with a beckoning motion and a bright grin.

“Ah! Good morning, Harriet! Come, we have saved you a seat.”

Harriet never wanted to sleep again. Too much happened when she wasn’t watching. Harriet bemusedly padded into the breakfast hall and stumbled over to the only free chair left, the one directly to Snape’s right. This was roughly the last place she'd prefer to be seated in the entire castle. Looking up, she met his dark glare. He was sneering at her. As usual. She did not respond except to blindly reach over and grab a container of jam and start eating it with a nearby spoon. She did not break eye contact. The sneer deepened.

“20 points from Ravenclaw for slovenly behavior,” said Snape. Harriet shrugged and kept eating. He hadn’t broken eye contact yet and Harriet was alternately incensed and amused that the pathetic man was trying to intimidate _her_. Someone else at the table let out a long-suffering sigh. Snape growled down at her, “If you do not cease this disgusting behavior this instant-“ and then made a move to stand up. Harriet bolted, grinning when her socks slid on the stones. She kept the jam on her way out. As she spun around the doorframe, she thought she heard the sound of her chair falling over, along with calls of her name, but she was already gone. She was starting to really enjoy a regular morning run. Maybe she’d try and do it more often for reasons other than self-preservation.  
*****  
Harriet did not want to return to the great hall for regular meals. Three meals a day with humans babbling freely was very excessive for Harriet. Unfortunately, Professor Flitwick had learned to come fetch her before each meal from the library. He seemed to be under the impression that she was forgetting what time it was, as if she wasn’t making a conscious choice to read instead of putting up with Snape and children she did not like.

Still, dinner tonight was maybe the best meal she’d ever attended. It was a Christmas Eve party, which at the Dursley's had meant being locked in the cupboard for a few days. Here, it meant little paper things that popped and burst into flame before providing a gift. Now this, this was why Harriet loved magic. The Dursleys might as well go decompose for how worthless they and their lives were. Harriet was at a table where she was _encouraged_ to make things explode and devour the remains.

Harriet laughed uproariously as she set off one popper after another. She threw presents she didn’t like onto the table in front of her to avoid giving them away to any specific person. She’d let the bird inside one popper fly away. After accounting for these losses, Harriet was now wearing or in the possession of a shiny metal bracelet on her wrist, a little tiara on her head, and two swirly rings filled with black fluid on her pointer fingers, although apparently they were supposed to change color depending on her mood. Black meant “none”. She was excited to melt them all down and chew on them. As long as she remembered to spit them out, she could chew them for hours and roll the texture around in her mouth for hours with her blazing tongue. Entertainment at its finest. Last but not least of her spoils, she had a pair of sunglasses over her regular glasses. She wasn’t gonna melt them, she just thought they were neat.

Of the dishes offered she’d found herself mostly eating the leftovers of what people set down for too long, although she did manage to snag herself a very odd savory pudding thing covered in spots and with lots of dark lumps. She did enjoy how the tables at Hogwarts always seemed to have something left exclusively for her.

“Ms.Potter,” came the unwanted voice of McGonagall, “is there a reason you have taken an entire tureen for your own consumption?” She looked pinched and unhappy. Harriet pulled her food closer and stuck her fork deep into the dish with a glare hidden behind her sunglasses. Next to her, the herbology professor leaned over, took one look into her dish, and flinched back.

“Don’t worry, Minerva,” said the professor, “she doesn’t have anything, er, worth sharing. Child, how in Merlin’s name can you eat that? And in such quantities?” Harriet looked around at the now quiet table as she swallowed a large bite that'd had her cheeks stuffed full. The question itself had her confused.

“It’s food," she said. "Food on this table is for us to eat. So I eat it.” She settled on a true statement she hoped they would extrapolate from. She wasn’t really sure how to make it much clearer, or even what they were trying to ask her about. McGonagall leaned up in her chair and looked into Harriet’s dinner bowl and then sat back with a grimace. The old white-haired man smiled benignly out at the residents of the table.

“She always eats disgusting stuff, Professor. We’ve tried to get Malfoy to stop bringing her to our table as she puts us off our food,” piped up an older boy in a green tie. Snape was glaring at her now.

“Unfortunately, Mr.Thompson, we cannot forbid her from eating where she wishes so long as she is invited. I will, however, have a chat with Mr.Malfoy. As for you, Potter, you are lucky your manners have been sufficient to keep me from banning you from meals altogether,” said Snape.

“Now Severus,” said the white-haired man with candies, “you cannot deprive the child of food as you very well know. I, for one, am glad that the more adventurous culinary pursuits of our hardworking elves are being appreciated. These meals are, as young Ms.Potter put it, cooked so as to be eaten after all.” Harriet grinned at the man and offered him her tureen. For that defense, he’d earned himself a bite of her meal. The man chuckled and took a spoonful. She watched him eat the tiny morsel with interest. Normally, she wouldn’t be so enthused but the man’s face was going a fascinating greenish color behind his white beard. “Ah,” he said, “I think I shall have to write to the Bertie Bott’s Every Flavor Beans company. It seems they have missed a unique opportunity.”  
*****  
The next morning greatly confused Harriet. Sometime in the night, without her noticing, two packages had appeared right outside the door to her room. And they both had her name written somewhere upon them. One, she recognized as having Hermione’s hand-writing and the other she did not so recognize. She dragged the boxes into her room and contemplated them from a few feet away. They were covered in shiny paper with little moving drawings on them. One had little trees like the lit-up ones all around the castle, and one had tiny owls flying around it through a blank blue paper sky. Harriet was immensely curious as to what was inside them. More than that, they had “To: Harriet Potter” written on them, like letters at the Dursleys except without an address. That was close enough to ownership for her. She used her heated fingers to half rip, half scorch the first package open.

This first package, labeled as being from Hermione, contained a book titled “Manners for the Modern Young Lady”. She did love books, and as far as she could tell she now actually owned this one. Like her textbooks, it was all hers now. She couldn’t wait to read it. And then eat it. First, though, she had to know what was in the next package! She was burning up inside with curiosity.

This second package had no “From” part written on it. Instead, there was a small envelope with a note inside. Harriet singed the edges of the envelope a bit, but managed to get it out intact. Then she read the note, and singed the edges of that as well.

_Your father entrusted this to me for safekeeping before he died. Use it well._

Harriet crinkled the letter a little bit with her grip. It was shaking right before her eyes. All of her was shaking. She stood up and took the note over to her bed. Opening her trunk, she shoved the note down to the very bottom and then slammed the trunk lid shut. The package sat behind her like a boulder.

She returned to her seat and picked up the box. This one, she opened slowly. She peeled it open like one might peel the bark from a tree. Inside, something smooth and silky slid over her fingertips. It was like something woven out of ashes, and it was just as grey. The one differentiating feature was that the hand she had beneath the strange gift had vanished from her sight along with the fabric.  
*****  
It had taken Harriet near a week to finish testing the cloak’s properties. She’d determined the basics of it. The cloak could not be damaged in any way, from temperature or mechanical stress or chemical reactions. It would only turn her, items she was wearing, and things she picked up and pulled beneath it with her invisible. Any objects she laid it over would not turn invisible nor turn the cloak invisible. The cloak did not change between states, it was either invisible or it was visible, grey, and smooth. She could see individual fibers of the fabric, but they did not detach and as such she could not test whether individual components retained the cloak’s properties nor what the original composition of the parts of the cloak would look like. The cloak did not react to any spell Harriet knew. It worked on her reflection in mirrors, and anything behind her would also be visible to the mirror as though she was not there. A beam of light shone through the visible cloak would be moderately obstructed, but a light shone through the cloak when invisible would shine through utterly unaltered, no matter what color or whether or not Harriet’s flesh was within the light’s trajectory. A light held beneath the cloak with her or lit while she was beneath it would light Harriet, but nothing outside the cloak, including the floor she stood on.

By all accounts of physics Harriet had ever read, this cloak was the most interesting thing she’d ever not-seen. And tonight she was field-testing it for the first time. She desperately needed to determine if humans perceived it differently than she did. So, noting the time in her experimental notes, she put on the cloak and silently swept out into the castle proper.

She kept the cloak tucked tight around her. It dragged on the floor a little bit unless she kept it clenched between her fingers. Filch had been lurking in a hallway nearby, being rude and mumbling about whipping students, and Harriet made a point of walking right past him. He didn’t even notice. Mrs.Norris looked like maybe she’d smelled something, but then she’d glanced up at the torches and returned to licking herself. Harriet grinned. She’d never met a non-human animal yet that hadn’t noticed her smoke-scent. Animals other than stupid humans tended to be extremely cautious around her, and most knew not to be trapped in a room with her. Now she had a better hold of herself and her smoke, some would shake off their instincts to simply sniff at her and move on. Humans really were dumb not to notice what almost every other mammal did about her lack of humanity. Other than Mrs.Norris, she wandered unseen and unnoticed by all until in her boredom she came upon an open door begging to be wandered through.

The room was near empty. The windows had trails of dust and spider’s footprints all up and down ancient glass set into greyed wood. The moonlight did not illuminate the room so much as it condensed into soft puddles over the floor stones. Harriet looked down to see if, when she’d stepped into it, it had rippled like water but she saw nothing beneath her but shafts of moonlight. Just as no light escaped from within her cloak, it seemed she could not fracture any light outside of it. Invisibility, thought Harriet, was far too close to not existing. She didn’t feel as though she was inside of this room at all. The only thing here capable of thwarting the moon’s rays was a massive glass pane set within a gold frame gone silvery white in the night. It was the only real thing in the world, in this frozen grey place.

Harriet walked up to the massive frame, letting the cloak fall away as she stepped forward. She wanted to exist. She needed to see it for herself. She stopped in front of the glass and looked into the flickering reflection of a raging flame. Her own raging. Harriet jerked forward and planted her hands against the glass. For a single burning moment she thought she was free, but then she saw the tiny white hands she’d impulsively moved and was reminded why that was impossible.

Her reflection was also, apparently, impossible. The flames in the not-mirror, for all they were bright and true to her magnificence, cast no light over her flesh. She’d never seen a fire that did not emit light and she felt oddly…cold. She was like that, now. She hadn’t really emitted light and warmth for years. Not like a flame should. In that moment, Harriet felt that nothing would be too high of a price to be one with that fire on the other side of the looking-glass, burning and bright and free and unbound.

“Harriet. It’s a pleasure to see you, despite the late hour.” Harriet whirled around as someone spoke from directly behind her. She hoped he was looking at the fake flames just behind her, if only as a warning to him of what he had just challenged. Standing there, completely calm and gently smiling, was the nice old man that gave her candies after the bathroom incident. He fit into the room like it had been built around him, or he out of it, with cobwebs for hair and moonlight for skin and night sky for eyes. Harriet hadn’t thought she was this unobservant, but she supposed that it made as much sense as anything that she hadn’t noticed the human. Certainly, he was here now and must have been here before her, given door had not opened after she entered.

“Did you come through the wall or just look a lot like the wall? Because I looked like the wall, and no one saw me. Like an octopus.” The old man smiled coyly and Harriet snorted lightly. She hoped he didn’t get any of his fluffy facial hair in his mouth.

“Very astute, my dear. I did, indeed, charm myself to appear more wall-colored until you joined me. Tell me, what do you think of this mirror?” the old man stepped forward to stand next to her and look forward into the glass. Her flame reflection did not cast light on him, either.

“It’s not a mirror,” she said. It didn’t show her reflection, and that’s what mirrors are.

“Oh?" the old man said. He stared into the glass for a moment, and the lines are his eyes went tight where his eyes themselves became shiny with water. "Well, you may just have a point, Harriet." Abruptly, he tore his eyes from the glass to look down at her and smile. "Still, it is known to us as the mirror of Erised. Read the top of the frame, dear girl.” Following his gesture, Harriet looked up to the top of the swirling metal frame and saw words etched into the washed-out gold.

“I show not your face, but your heart’s desire,” she whispered, glancing back to her companion. The old man raised his bushy white eyebrows.

“Such a sharp wit. I have a riddle you may enjoy, dear. The happiest man in the world may look into this mirror and see only his own reflection." He looked her over softly, and Harriet felt some of the cold inside her recede. "Do you understand?" At her nod, the old man turned back to the mirror. "If it is not too much to ask, Harriet, would you tell me what you see?” Harriet got the sense, from his tone and from the brittle sag of his shoulders, that if she didn’t answer, he would not push her on the matter. That’s why she decided to tell him.

“I see myself. But I’m not happy,” she grimaced a little, and tore her gaze away from both the man and the mirror. She wanted to go somewhere else. “Do you see something nice, old man?” The old man let out a breathless chuckle, as if startled into humor. 

“Hmm,” the old man rubbed his beard, “it’s been a long time since I’ve had a nick-name. I think it’s quite fitting, but perhaps you might agree to instead call me ‘Albus’. It seems only fair, after all, given my use of your own first name." Albus winked at her, and Harriet giggled quietly in the near-silence. "Now, when I look in the mirror I see…” Albus kept his mouth open for a moment before he shut it with a snap and looked suddenly very sad. “Nothing of importance, dear girl. Just the musings of a truly old man.” Albus turned to her slowly, as though it hurt to move, but he made the effort to face her fully and look her straight in the eye. “Greater men than I have wasted away in front of this mirror, Harriet. I do not exaggerate when I say that this is likely the most dangerous object currently in Hogwarts. It is moving tomorrow. You will not come across it again. Please, do not go seeking it out.” Harriet frowned and grabbed Albus’s sleeve. He looked cold, now. Old humans didn’t make warmth as well, she knew.

“I wouldn’t, Albus. It just makes me sad and the glass is very cold. And it doesn’t even show my reflection.” Albus looked at her for a single moment longer before scrunching his eyes shut and laughing. In contrast to his earlier laughs, these sounded effortless. He patted her hand with his dry, knobbly fingers and then moved towards the door with a hand on her shoulder to lead her along with him. She stooped to pick up her cloak on the way. Whatever he found funny, she was glad she’d helped him. Humans were difficult for her to help, they just were all so complicated. Still, she had to try, for humans like this one who had unequivocally earned it. Perhaps she could try to get him to give her something more so that she could make him warm in return. She’d love some more candies.

“Thank you, Harriet. I think I will, rather than heeding my own words, lend myself to your wisdom. You’ve done well, tonight, to remind an old man of what we see within our reflections.” He and Harriet stopped in the hallway outside from the mirror. The torches cast warm golden and orange lights over them both, and the flickering made it feel to Harriet as though time had restarted. “Now, you’d best return to Ravenclaw tower. Classes begin anew in the morning. You and I will both need our rest.” With that, Albus wandered off, leaving Harriet to make her own way. She threw the cloak over her shoulders and vanished once again. This time, though, she felt much more real for all that the light now let her pass unshadowed and unshone upon.


	13. The Barbarian

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harriet does her own thing for a bit. It doesn't really go well for anyone else, but that's okay.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wrote a really shitty crossover on accident when I was bored last night and I have no idea if I should post it. Like I'm embarrassed it exists. I can't even edit it.  
> Anyways! I was wondering, would longer chapters be okay? I'm trying to keep an average of around 3000 but sometimes I feel like more would help me to tell a better story.

Harriet had an axe! An entire axe! She’d taken it from a suit of armor and it had chased her so she’d chopped its head off with the axe and melted the neck hole so that when it tried to chase her it had to carry its head and it ran into a wall and fell over. Now, she was catapulting herself axe-over-heels down every unused hallway she could find, banging against caterwauling portraits at every chance she got. 

She’d been sprinting around the castle for the entire three hours that she’d been awake, the best three hours she’d ever had with an axe, so she was starting to run low on fuel. There was something she’d always wanted to do at the Dursley’s. Or rather, eat at the Dursley’s. And the perfect candidate was right in front of her nose. Harriet giggled and pressed her cheek against the axe blade for a moment. Dreams being realized should be savored.

Harriet hefted the axe high above her head with both arms and whipped it down with a thwack right through the heavy wooden door to a random classroom. She yanked it out and swung it like a baseball bat. The cross-hatch cut knocked a solid chunk out of the door. Now that she had a system down, Harriet went to town. She slammed the axe blade into the wood over and over and grinned against the wood chips flying at her face. One came close enough that she snapped it out of the air. It was crunchy. Laughing, she sent a lick of flame over her gums to burn away the splinters. The axe ripped through the door like teeth through meat. 

The majority of the door fell inwards to the room beyond with a horrendous crash and Harriet joyfully thrust her axe into the air and breathed fire over the blade. Then she took a peek through her self-fashioned portal. Beyond the doorframe, Harriet realized that this classroom could not actually be quite as abandoned as she thought. Nothing was dusty, and the candy wrapper on the floor near her foot had fresh chocolate on it from the looks of it. The black board had “Defense Against the Dark Arts” written alongside the date. The date was for yesterday. Honestly, this explained a lot. Harriet had not once attended Defense since she realized that the purple professor made her feel like she was going to puke up magma. She’d realized on her first day of classes. Obviously, she’d never been in this room. It really was lucky Harriet had done this on a Saturday. 

Having never been here, Harriet was very tempted to go exploring. Temptation never was something she could resist. She squeezed herself through the shattered gap in the wooden door and stepped through to the classroom of her least liked person in the castle. 

Harriet pushed fire into her eyes and slowly scanned the room. A few deep breaths augmented with flame gave her an idea of the room beyond what pathetic human senses would note. Her natural tendencies pulled her to expand into the warmest, driest areas of the room. By getting her flames as close to the surface as possible she could find any spots with cold and wetness. The window stuck out immediately, but she got a sense of…barrier over at the door opposite the one she’d entered through. It wasn’t cold, or wet, more like absent. Not even solid walls felt like that, a wall had a temperature and some slight flow of air. The door had none of that. Harriet cautiously approached it. She made sure to stop every few feet and feel it out again, and she tried to stay behind desks whenever possible, in case it did something. Once she got to the door, she sent out a small burst of flame to test things out. The door singed like normal, and even better she could sense the temperature and air flow of the area she’d burned! Harriet grinned and bounced on her toes and then heated up the axe in her hands as best she could without melting it. Then she rammed it into the door. Harriet demolished every last scrap of wood that blocked her flames with extreme prejudice. Soon only charred splinters were left. Harriet stepped through riding a wave of her own superiority to human pettiness. 

Inside was a room that could only be the realm of the defense professor. The office of the purple professor felt off, somehow. Harriet didn’t know what an office should look like, but this one seemed functional enough. There was a desk covered in papers, shelves covered in books, and a few trunks laid on the floor amongst scraps of paper and beat-up treatises on dark magic. Harriet sniffed the air and noticed nothing amiss, beyond usual human smells. In fact, all her nose could detect was the slightest whiffs of sewage and freshly shaped metal. These were smells common for humans, Harriet knew. All humans pooped and most humans used metal tools. Dudley had often smelled like sewage. Harriet walked over to the desk and looked at the books behind it and the papers on it. After a few minutes of reading she realized what was so off. There were two different organization systems for the books, two trunks, two sets of handwriting, two of everything! This office wasn’t for one person, it was for two. Harriet relaxed and giggled a little. To think, she’d been perturbed over the human proclivity for sharing! 

Speaking of doubles, one thing in the room seemed to have nothing to do with teaching. Harriet looked up at a small mirror on the wall, a few feet above her and about the size of her face. The thing made Harriet terribly dizzy. It reflected the mirror on the opposite wall and gave Harriet the impression of being in the middle of an unending tunnel. She quickly looked away and wandered over to the trunks. The metal and molten sludge smell was stronger now. She half hoped there’d be an actual functioning forge here. She’d always wanted to see one, and perhaps use it as a bathtub of some sort or maybe try her hand at sculpting. She came to a trunk covered in locks, each with a little glowing blue squiggle on it. Somehow, she doubted “alohomora” would work here.

Harriet took her axe and thwacked the top of the trunk with all of her might. She was very successful. The slice gave her just enough room to wiggle a finger inside and burn away at the edges of her cut until she had a little window into the trunk. She pouted immediately. There was no forge at all. Instead, a huge shiny ball was sitting in the trunk on top of a pillow that radiated heat near as intense as Harriet managed on a mediocre day. Harriet sighed and flopped back away from the trunk to sit on the floor, dropping her axe beside her. This caused her to look up to the ceiling. Here, she let out an awestruck gasp. The ceiling was covered in diagrams of chess matches, one after the other, slowly moving as if a dozen people were playing against each other upside-down. Harriet loved ceilings in the magical world. Between this and the great hall and Peeves, she was definitely planning on looking up more often. 

Harriet heard a slight rattling noise from out in the hallway. It could be a rat, or it could be a human. She stood up with her axe and wiggled her way back through the chopped-up door, being sure to burn the edges on her way out. There was nothing out in the classroom proper, and she silently crept to the main door. She shoved her face up to the edge of the gap and looked around for any humans. None were obviously present. This was her chance to hide elsewhere!

Just in case, Harriet grabbed all of the wood that wasn’t attached to the hinges and dragged it away. She’d eat it in private. The wood chunk was pretty big, and her human body pretty tiny, so she put her axe on top of the wood, grabbed one edge with both hands, and started shuffling backwards to drag it along with her. Once she reached the staircase, she just kicked it down the steps. Luckily for her one floor down there was an abandoned classroom. Strange, really, that there were so many abandoned classes and no students to fill them. Harriet opened up a much lower quality door and shoved her wood inside ahead of her. 

And there was Peeves. Holding a pike. 

For a moment, the two could only stare at each other. Peeves’s flotation even stilled for a moment, like a fishing bobber about to be pulled down by its catch. Harriet barely flickered her eyes to the axe in her hand before the poltergeist struck. Metal rang out against the grating screech of Peeves’s laughter. The pike was caught against the edge of her axe and Harriet twirled it away from her face, forcing Peeves to stab against the wall instead. Collecting her footing, Harriet took a running start at Peeves and spun outward with her axe aimed right towards his chest. Peeves didn’t even stop laughing as he brought up the length of the pike and caught her blow. The axe recoiled in her hands, and she used the momentum to spin the axe up over her shoulder like a bat and swing again. Peeves dodged to the left howling with glee. Harriet couldn’t remember the last time she’d had so much fun with another…living-ish thing. 

“Ah ha ha ha ha!” squealed Peeves, “Potty wee Potter is blind as a bat! Can’t see me through those speccy specs, nooo, can’t hit me neither,” and with that he made the loudest fart noise with his tongue Harriet had ever heard and swept down through the floor, leaving the pike behind. 

Harriet stuck out her tongue and poked it curiously. She was going to learn how to do that if it was the last thing she did as a human-shaped being.  
*****  


Hermione had come to find her soon after the students flooded Hogwarts once again. Harriet had been studying for a good portion of the afternoon in the library. She wasn’t studying anything for classes, but rather she’d found a fairly interesting book on maths called "Arithmancy for Beginners". The problems were fairly easy for Harriet. It was all about keeping everything equal, equivalent. She did that instinctively. The interesting bit was learning how humans expressed diverse concepts related to equivalency. She was reading about a fairly neat theorem when Hermione threw herself into the seat across from her with a huff and a murderous glare. Not that Hermione would win in a fight against Harriet. But she might try.

“Hello, Harriet,” said Hermione. Then, she crossed her arms and huffed again. Her eyes were near boring holes into Harriet’s skull. Carefully, Harriet leaned back in her chair and began to heat up one of her hands beneath the table.

“Hello, Hermione,” she answered. Hermione’s glare intensified.

“Is that all you have to say? Harriet?”

“Er,” Harriet scrambled desperately for what Hermione may be angry about. The worst case scenario, that Hermione had figured out Harriet wasn’t human, had Harriet sending heat down into her legs as well. Just in case. “…yes? Why?”

“Why?” Hermione hissed. “I got you a gift! For Christmas! And you didn’t get me anything in return! I thought we were friends, and you said you’d be getting me a book, but…nothing! But fine!” Hermione cut herself off and slammed a fist down on the table. Harriet flinched reflexively, flickering internally, and for a moment Hermione’s anger faded into an apologetic grimace. Harriet mutely scrunched down in her chair and avoided looking at Hermione further. “It’s... it’s fine. I suppose we just aren’t as close as I thought. Foolish of me.” Hermione was gathering water in her eyes. Harriet had read about crying, although she’d never seen it, and she knew it was extremely bad. One of the worst human reactions.

“I’ll get you a gift!” she blurted. So far as Harriet could tell, Hermione was reacting to Harriet acting unfairly, and not reciprocating Hermione’s gift in a way the human could understand. She had read Hermione’s gift and then eaten it, and the heat and light she produced as a result did indirectly benefit Hermione in an entropy-of-the-Universe sort of way, but Harriet wasn’t so dense as to think humans noticed that sort of thing. “I didn’t know you wanted one. Please stop crying now.” Harriet mumbled that last bit under her breath. Hermione looked extremely confused for a few moments, before she clapped her hands together and seemingly came to some realization.

“You didn’t know!” she said more than asked, “Of course! How insensitive of me, I take it you don’t celebrate Christmas? I’m so sorry, I assumed we followed the same holiday traditions. See, I sent you a gift to celebrate the holiday, and you wouldn’t have thought of that!” Hermione had clasped her hands and stood so that she was towering above Harriet with her “perfect score” face on. At least she’d stopped crying. As she relaxed, she also plopped back down into her seat.

“So…I’ll get you a book?” said Harriet, quietly amused. She was coming to believe that Hermione really was simply a lot like a fire, a lot like Harriet. Underneath the human complications and sensibilities, she just wanted things to be fair.

“Well, if you’d like to,” Hermione replied. Her expression seemed pleased. Beyond her interpretation being confirmed, Harriet was quite glad. Having Hermione think Harriet was an unbalanced, selfish thing like some human was an uncomfortable thought. Harriet was better than that.

There was the following uncomfortable thought that Harriet should not care at all what any human thought of her, but the fact remained that she did. Whatever strange urges may burn through her, it would never be in her nature to lie to herself.

“So, how was your break, Harriet? Was it good to visit with, er, you said Petunia and Vernon?”

“No!” Harriet yelped. “Of course not. I stayed here. I’m never going back to the Dursley’s, not if I can help it.”

If Harriet had thought about it for a second longer, she might have not answered so readily. As it was, when Hermione’s face fell and then furrowed, Harriet was forced to reflect that she may be more unprepared to face the curiousity of those like Hermione than she’d thought.

“Is that, er,” she haltingly began, “why exactly don’t you want to go home? If you don’t mind my asking.”

Harriet frowned down at the table. “I like you asking me things,” she admitted, albeit a tad ruefully. “I don’t get asked things. Which is strange, because I know a lot.”

“Oh,” said Hermione. Then, she hummed softly. Harriet met her eye to eye and the warmth she saw there surprised her.

“I don’t want to go back to the Dursleys because I hate Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon. They’re very…cold.”

“Cold,” said Hermione thoughtfully. “I see.” Harriet shuffled in her seat. Whatever Hermione saw, she doubted it was anything like what Harriet saw. “So you stayed here, then. How was it?”

“Mmm. I got two gifts. Your book, and an invisibility cloak. Also I found a fake mirror.”

“Harriet!” Hermione yelped. “An invisibility cloak? Really? Do you have any idea how rare those are? I can’t even imagine the cost of one, what with the demiguise going extinct. Who sent it? What are you going to do with it?”

“No, and I don’t know, and wear it? I don’t think it cost anything, the note said-” Harriet cut herself off. Given the cloak had belonged to James Potter, Harriet arguably had no right to it. If she knew how, she might try to send it back to whoever made it.

“Said what?”

Harriet shrugged. “Mmn,” she grunted. “You can use it too, if you want. It interacts with the properties of light in some fun ways. I tested it.”

“Does it really?” Hermione absently replied. She was pulling out a notebook and quill, looking half ready to write a report right then and there. “Fascinating! I’d be delighted. That’s very kind of you, Harriet, thank you. Oh, although,” Hermione bit her lip, “you must’nt feel obligated. To share, I mean.”

“Use it or don’t. It’s up to you.” There was no way Harriet was going to bring up the mistakes of identity that made her just as qualified for ownership as Hermione, if not less so. Luckily, it seemed this was firm enough to satisfy Hermione. Honestly, the way the girl devoured information made Harriet feel near starved in her own right. In fact, the books on the table were starting to look very enticing.

In convenient timing with Harriet’s attention waning, Hermione started emptying her book-bag onto the table. “Anyways, did you hear about what happened to the defense classroom? It’s awful!”

“Ah.” Harriet was just going to keep her mouth shut on that particular topic. 

*****  
“Good morning, class. Please ready your wands. Today is a practical lesson on changing the properties of a pebble by color. You will each receive several small stones and you are to practice the incantation, wand movement, and visualization we discussed last class. Ms.Turpin, if you would?” McGonagall brandished a box full of pebbles at Lisa, who was sitting in the front row. Lisa smiled and stood up to take the box. She passed a few pebbles to each student with a placid expression, only interrupted at the desks of a few of the girls, including Harriet. Harriet got a scowl and pebbles dropped onto her desk with a clatter.

Chatter filled the classroom as everyone started casting the spell and then complaining to their neighbor about how it didn’t work. Harriet poked at her pebble for a moment and then rolled it between her fingers. It was worn and smooth, dusty with black and white and grey speckles uniformly distributed to give the appearance of random placement. It felt full up with energy. Rocks tended to hold on to light and heat in ways humans couldn’t generally detect, but Harriet could say with some certainty that this was a relatively recent igneous rock. Being full of energy would make it much easier for her to change it into something else; it was already used to changing. Her other pebbles weren’t so great so she shoved them into her pocket. Her fingertips were a bit hot and she thought she felt them melt and crumble a bit in her grip. She’d need to cool down her hands a bit before grabbing her wand. On second thought, Harriet startled, her wand had actually been in her other hand this whole time. She yanked it up to her eyes and cautiously looked it over. Not even a speck of soot stained the cedar wood. The temperature of her wand had not changed. She sniffed at it curiously. Her hand wrapped around it smelled of smoke, but the wand itself simply smelled of cedar. Untouched and deadly, offering no hint to the light it kept beneath its seamless surface. 

Harriet glared down at the pebble on her desk, the sole stone to pass her review. She thrust her wand out over it and, ignoring the incantation and wand movement she’d practiced for hours, she jammed her flames into the wood and concentrated on exactly how the stone would change. She imagined it bubbling with heat until the crystal lattices of energy within shattered apart and rearranged into something glassy, a dreamcatcher for all light but blue. Her braids felt like molten metal over her shoulders. If she didn’t sit in the back of the class she wouldn’t have dared to try this. Millimeter by millimeter, the pebble went shiny and blue. 

“Ms.Potter,” McGonagall called neutrally as she approached, “I haven’t heard much out of you today. Have you attempted the spell?” The professor glanced down to her desk and a pleased smile lit upon her face as she took in Harriet’s bead. “Excellent work, Ms.Potter. I’ll be taking this to grade, if you’re finished.” 

“You may.” Harriet did appreciate being asked for permission to move her pebble. McGonagall reached down to pick up the not-pebble. The moment it touched her fingers, McGonagall retreated with a yelp, holding her hand to her chest. 

“Ms.Potter! I don’t know what you did, but that bead is appallingly hot to the touch! Please, back away from your desk. I will collect it when it cools.” Now, McGonagall was glaring at her again. Harriet was forced to stand at the back of the classroom for the rest of the lesson, and she fumed the entire time. It was not her fault humans were both fragile, rude fleshbags and too stupid to check the temperature of something before poking it with one of their most sensitive nerve clusters. The bell rang and Harriet left before McGonagall could find more fault with her lovely magic. 

Outside the classroom, Crab and Boil waved blankly at her from next to a painting of several priests getting shit-faced. She had waved back. Remembering her conversation with Hermione, she figured they also wanted Christmas gifts. Walking over to greet them, she handed each of them some of her melted and cooled pebbles. They took them and grunted. Harriet grunted back. She adored these humans so much. Draco, who she suddenly noticed had been there the whole time, tossed his blonde hair and huffed incredulously at her. 

“Harriet!” said Draco, “I am very surprised at you! Neglecting to send me so much as a card?”

“Oh, um,” Harriet replied, “I didn’t know about Christmas. I don’t really do muggle things, so I didn’t know about presents.” Draco looked gobsmacked. He was turning redder than Harriet had ever seen him. Then he puffed out his chest and pouted horrendously with his hands on his hips.

“Of course! We Malfoys don’t send out gifts for the very same reason! I simply assumed one of your…background…would be unaware.” Crab and Boil shuffled behind Draco with odd looks on their faces. Draco quickly rallied and smiled smugly down at Harriet. It made her want to burn off his face. In a teasing way. “Well, I’m so glad to be surprised with such decorum, Harriet. I’ll give you more credit in the future. You do your reputation justice.” 

Harriet shrugged. She wasn’t sure what Draco was going on about, but if Draco was happy it would be easier for Harriet to get stuff out of him. Like entertainment. In fact, she knew just what to say to get him started.

“So, how did your dormmates behave at your Christmas Gala?” Draco actually gasped in delight before taking her hand and tucking it into the crook of his arm. 

“Oh Harriet,” he started as they walked away, “their behavior was appalling! Let me tell you all about Pansy’s faux pas at the chocolate fountain! Even you would have been offended.”


	14. The Consultant

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harriet juggles a few part-time jobs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Short...because school is hard...and also because I'm writing like four other stories as well. I'll maybe post the Naruto ones if there's any reason to talk about Naruto in the year of our lord 2018. Also known as a show I've never actually watched.

Harriet was enjoying her daily library time a tad less than usual. Draco had figured out how to streamline their relationship and was now often bribing her to accomplish small tasks for him and his symbiotes. This, in itself, was wonderful because now Draco would give her things to eat a lot more often. In practice, Harriet would probably start saying ‘no’ soon, because doing Boil’s homework was very boring once the whole different handwriting thing became easy. 

The library today was close to empty. Fridays often sent students out relaxing, apparently due to the lack of pressure provided by an entire weekend of time to catch up academically. Harriet often heard students joyfully exclaiming over Friday arriving, and planning how they were going to use their time. The only students around her this evening were the older ones that were anxious to study as much as possible. They really did look exhausted, and Harriet hoped that one or two would fall asleep so that she could go rifle through their pockets. 

Harriet was eyeing up a particularly promising target whose head kept rolling to one side, when Hermione marched past the front library desk and looked around with her usual air of intensity and vague annoyance. She locked eyes with Harriet and smiled triumphantly before walking towards her. Feeling triumphant, thought Harriet, was an odd reaction considering she’d told Hermione she’d be here at this time. Hermione reached their study table and plonked her bag onto the floor next to her before she sat down. 

“What are you so busy with? I know for a fact all of your homework is done.” Hermione had approached her, Harriet had assumed, for their planned ‘reading in proximity and then talking about it’ time. This sort of questioning was an odd opener from Hermione, and Harriet set down her gnawed-on half-quill. 

“Right now I’m doing Boil’s homework for the week in his handwriting so that his symbiote will give me a set of pillows,” she replied.

“What? Who is…how…You can’t do other people’s homework, Harriet, that’s cheating,” Hermione nagged. Even as she wagged her finger she looked to still be puzzling over Harriet’s words.

“I’m not cheating, he is. And I want more pillows.” Harriet began writing again with a purposefully slack hand, frequently letting her fingers twitch and make splats of ink. She made sure to spell all but the simplest of words incorrectly. 

“Ugh! Harriet!” Hermione huffed, “Fine, never mind that, there’s much more important things going on. I need your help. Consider yourself lucky I’m going to pretend I don’t know about this.” Hermione had her arms crossed and a look on her face eerily reminiscent of McGonagall.

“I consider myself lucky,” said Harriet. Hermione appreciated when she repeated back to her things she’d just said. It, ironically, moved the conversation along to the point faster. Hermione looked satisfied as she leaned forward across their table to speak in a lower voice. 

“I’ve been thinking, and I realized, the three-headed dog was guarding something. I wasn’t sure at first, but I wasn’t able to get the image of that room out of my head and I managed to get Hagrid to admit it. The dog was on top of a trapdoor. There’s something in the castle and I think that Professor Snape is planning to steal it.” Harriet sighed and leaned back in her chair. Twirling a braid, she grumbled. She wasn’t sure how to say this…

“The slimy bastard wouldn’t do that. He’s like a shell of a human being, he doesn’t have motivations.”

“Didn’t you hear- wait, did you just call Professor Snape a-, a-?!” Hermione’s lower jaw was hanging open and Harriet could see all of her lower teeth. They were very white.

“Yes? It’s…what he is?” she tentatively replied. It seemed Hermione was particularly slow on the uptake today. Her teeth clinked together and she glared at Harriet, planting her palms on the table.

“No! It is not!” Hermione yelled at her. Harriet hurriedly leaned back and looked over to the library front desk. The Librarian was glowering at them and impatiently putting a finger over her lips. Harriet peeked over at Hermione to see her turning very red and slumping down in her chair. Harriet reached over and poked her hand. Humans found touch comforting.

“Well, it’s descriptive so it’s easier to remember. Also, he’s not gonna steal anything.” Hermione appeared as incredulous as Harriet had ever seen her. She pulled her hands away from the table and started frantically waving them in the air.

“Then how do you explain the massive dog bite he got on Halloween night? It must be from the three-headed dog, and he lured in the troll as a distraction! I didn’t want to believe it of a professor either, Harriet, but I’m going to need you to just listen to me,” she begged. Harriet was bewildered by Hermione’s begging. What exactly did the girl think begging would accomplish? Harriet was listening, but she wasn’t going to help just because Hermione asked nicely. Especially when she had an entire library to explore. 

“I have new interesting things to investigate,” she tried to explain. Surely Hermione, who also loved books, would understand? It wasn’t like this weirdness she was talking about was particularly compelling compared to all the compendiums literally at their fingertips. 

“What could possibly be more important?” Hermione growled. Her hair was puffing up again, and Harriet decided it was time to nip this in the bud and go back to something enjoyable. 

“Voldemort.” For a moment, neither of them moved. Then Hermione’s face slackened and paled at the same time. Harriet bet she could have slapped her and gotten a similar reaction. All of that over with, Harriet went back to Boil’s homework. 

“I suppose he did murder your parents,” Hermione muttered, chewing on her fingernails for a moment before she clenched her fists and looked back to Harriet with determination. “But this is more urgent! And it’s not like it’s a massive time commitment. Please, just hear me out?” 

“I’ll always listen when you talk. You’re interesting.” Harriet answered with a shrug. She might try to get humans to talk about something else, something cool, but she wouldn’t just ignore people. Silence was pretty boring now that Harriet had gotten used to being around so many humans at once. 

“Oh, well. Thank you? Anyways, I talked to Hagrid and he let slip that whatever the dog is guarding, it has something to do with Nicholas Flamel. We need your help with the research and the corridor if it comes to that. You killed that troll, I know you can handle that three-headed dog as well. Something strange is happening, and Nicholas Flamel and Professor Dumbledore are right at the center of it, and the answer is whatever is at the end of the third floor corridor! You’re the only person I know who could help us.” Now Hermione was getting somewhere. Nicholas Flamel was something Harriet could consume the knowledge about that didn’t rely on shaky human testimony about trapdoors Harriet hadn’t seen hidden beneath dogs Harriet had already researched.

“Okay,” Harriet started, “I’m a little curious. But I’m not gonna help for free. Feed me first.” Hermione’s eyes rolled so hard Harriet could see more blood vessels than usual at the edges of her sclera. They looked dull, and wet. 

“Fine. But you are going to meet Ron and Neville, as well!”  
*****  
Harriet’s Notes on Creatures

Acromantula: Big spiders, herd animals, crunchy taste?

Bowtruckle: Twigs that run

Centaur: Like a human, but horse body (NOT horse head!), has arms, maybe? 

Crup: Dog with three tails

Dog: Crup with one tail

Dragons: !!! So cool! Breathes fire! I love them, are they like me? Wish I’d gotten a dragon body instead of human, but laying eggs sounds gross; might eat me; Lots of kinds based on place and number of spikes

Frog: toads, but better, poisonous sometimes, beware: lives in water

Fairy: tiny wimps that light up, like a bug

Flesh-eating slug: a slug that eats faster than most slugs

Kneazle: slang for cat

Lethifold: BAD BAD BAD smothers fires, burn immediately or learn patronus (what’s a patronus???)

Narwhal: big fish with a giant tooth that looks like a unicorn horn

Owl: Fluffy mailmen, pukes up bones, big eyes, polite and eats dead rodents, be respectful!

Quintaped: a sea star but furry and on land and fast, rumored to be the result of human pettiness

Rat: Owl food that’s self-aware

Sasquatch: probably not real

Three-headed dog: like a crup but backwards

Toad: like a frog but more common in Hogwarts

Troll: smells like sewage, stupid, likes to crush humans, like a human but bigger (hairless sasquatch?)

Unicorn: horse with a horn (on the forehead), likes little girls, probably evil, this is the thing on Mandy’s biggest poster  
*****  
The next day, Hermione guided Harriet to the back of the library where Ron and Neville were sitting at a table looking uncomfortable and curious, both. 

“Ron, Neville, this is Harriet Potter. Harriet, Ron Weasley and Neville Longbottom.” Hermione gestured grandly to the two boys. One had startlingly red hair and was looking at her with something almost like awe. The other had blonde hair and looked sweaty and nervous. They both had red ties like Hermione. 

“Do you really have the scar?” the read head blurted. Harriet wished that question still confused her. She nodded once and then looked up at Hermione. “Can I see it?” the boy continued. Harriet looked back to him and scowled. Then she turned back to Hermione yet again. The girl looked a bit nervous now, swapping her gaze back and forth between Harriet and the red head.

“Let’s sit down!” Hermione squeaked. She near about shoved Harriet down into a seat before taking one herself. “Now, we’re here because Dumbledore is using the school to guard some unknown object, and we have reason to believe someone is planning to steal it. In order to gain more information we need to divide up research on Nicholas Flamel. Knowing what we are protecting will help us to determine why Professor Sn- that is, some unknown person, would try to steal it.”

“I read his name in a book of catholic church architecture of the last thousand years,” said Harriet. Hermione, Ron, and Neville looked at her incredulously. 

“And you waited until now to tell us? Just whose side is this snob on?” said Ron. He was turning an interesting shade of red that made his freckles vanish. Hermione slapped him over the back of his head.

“That’s just how she is, Ron, we talked about this! Now Harriet, can you tell us what book it was and what it said?” said Hermione as she turned away from Ron to face her. 

“Erm,” Harriet screwed up her eyes and thought as hard as possible, “dunno the book, it said that…um…Flamel and his wife have funded the building of lots of fountains and statues in catholic churches in Western Europe for the past 500 years.” Harriet opened her eyes and beamed in triumph. Hermione was looking puzzled, Ron exasperated, and Neville even more nervous.

“Erm…Harriet…that’s not really…” Hermione stuttered.

“Nobody can be alive for 500 years! This is useless. Can we go yet, Hermione?” Ron interrupted angrily. Neville was screwing up his eyebrows and looking down at the table.

“Ron!” Hermione snarled, “just because she got the year wrong doesn’t mean this isn’t useful! We should all start researching Catholic church expenditures, maybe from the last 50 years…”

“Hermione, we’re never going to find this, it’s a needle in a haystack and you’re the only one we’ve got that’s a decent researcher, especially since you brought us the dumbest Ravenclaw in Hogwarts. I mean come on, she isn’t even smart enough to dress herself!” Ron was pointing his finger a centimeter away from Harriet’s nose. She eyed it in preparation. One touch, and she’d return the favor. 

“She’s special, Ron!” Hermione screamed back, “and she gets better marks than I do, so if she’s dumb then what does that make you!”

“Someone who knows how to shower, that’s who!” Ron bellowed back. Neville looked like he was about to puke. Harriet was very done with this.

“What’s so wrong with my clothes and body?” she demanded of Ron and Hermione. The two stopped immediately and gave each other a very significant glance. They settled back into their seats and their elbows bumped into each other. 

“Well, Harriet,” Hermione began, “it’s like, um, it’s just a tad odd how, um, your clothes and hair look, but you don’t smell bad, or anything!”

“What Hermione is trying to say,” Ron stepped in to rescue Hermione, “is that you look like you’ve been raised in a barn.” Neville looked confused, but Hermione was beaming.

“Ron, you remembered the muggle idioms I taught you?” Hermione asked Ron with a joyous glint in her eyes.

“Well,” Ron answered, rubbing at his nose, “they’re funnier than wizard ones, is all, and you use them a lot.” Hermione smiled as Ron’s ears went a bit pink.

“How do I make myself look normal?” Harriet asked the two, interrupting their staring. They looked back to her in unison. Hermione looked back to Ron who shrugged his shoulders a little with a quirked lip. Hermione clenched her jaw and turned to face Harriet straight on before speaking.

“Tell you what, Harriet,” Hermione finally said, “how about this next weekend we have a girls night, you can come sleep over in Gryffindor Tower and I’ll show you some tricks my mother taught me.” Hermione was close-lipped smiling at her, but Harriet frowned.

“What should I do for you?” she replied. Hermione sighed and frowned lightly.

“Honestly, Harriet, I understand you have some quirks but I cannot wait for your strange obsession with trades to cool down.” Harriet doubted that would happen. “How about we consider you looking nicer when we spend time together as my repayment?” This suited Harriet just fine. 

“Um,” Neville spoke up, “I think, maybe, I know how someone could live for 500 years.” Harriet and the other two whipped around to look at Neville who shrank beneath their gazes. “It’s like, well, um…”

“Just say it, mate,” Ron encouraged.

“Well, my gran used to tell me stories about the philosopher’s stone, an alchemical gem that turns lead to gold and gives the owner eternal life.” Hermione’s eyes were bugging out and Harriet was leaning almost her entire body over the table towards Neville.

“The Philosopher’s Stone…” Hermione mumbled. Then she caught Harriet’s eye.

“Alchemy Section?” asked Harriet.

“Alchemy section,” Hermione answered. And the two stood up and ran for the next shelf over from potions. 

“Well,” Harriet heard as they ran off, “at least we know why they’re friends, now.”

Hermione had longer legs and reached the shelf first. Wordlessly, she reached up and started pulling books and pilling them into Harriet’s waiting arms. Once the books went above Harriet’s head Hermione started keeping the books in her arms. They had roughly half the shelf when they stumbled back to Ron and Neville. Everything fell into habit from there. Harriet and Hermione started frantically flipping through books, passing them from pile to pile so that no book got checked twice. Ron and Neville, Harriet saw from the corner of her eye, had scooted away from the table until their chairs were against the walls. 

Most of the books were full of theory, with prefaces by potions masters and arithmancers. On Harriet’s sixth book, though, she found a book that had a chapter labeled “the Philosopher’s Stone” towards the end of the text. Harriet frantically flipped to the proper page. Almost immediately, she found it.

“Although the theory on the Philosopher’s Stone is notoriously incomplete, there is one alchemist who has come to fame in the community: the only known creator of the Philosopher’s Stone, Nicholas Flamel, now aged 660.” Harriet read this aloud and the sound of turning pages and shuffling chairs ceased. 

“We’ve found it,” Hermione whispered. Harriet ignored her and settled in to read the rest of the chapter, and then likely the rest of the book. Her duty to Hermione was done, at least for now. She wanted to know just what kind of sacrifice Flamel must have made to gain an extra half a millennium of life.


	15. The Penny

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harriet talks to some things pretending to be human, and humors the real humans attached.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No editor, as per my usual. This chapter is the beginning of some fun things, but there's also a lot of material in here inspired by a few of my favorite commentators. Thanks to CurlyHairedWookie, Neil, Relissi, and EmeraldOasis, as well as everyone else who is enjoying my work. Writing this is the highlight of my week.

Harriet could not let go of the thought of the Philosophers stone all week. It was stuck in her consciousness, always flickering to the front her mind the moment she let herself be distracted. Friday night, when she stared into a torch on the wall, she let the ever-changing flame in her sight and within her burn away all but the conundrum of a human who, somehow, had found something worth a lifespan over ten times the average for a man born in the 1320s. She couldn’t think of anything she could eat that would grant her that kind of power. The flame on the wall tumbled and flickered, and Harriet’s shadow settled against the stone like it was sitting across from her. 

The shadow’s head tilted and grabbed onto its braids. Except the shadow didn’t actually do anything, it just pretended to do what Harriet did.

Maybe, Flamel was like a shadow, thought Harriet. It might look alive, and act like alive things, but just be a shadow cast from the Flamel who died so long ago. It wouldn’t be the first dead human Harriet knew of that walked around faking aliveness. And, muggles had so many stories about corpses continuing on without souls that she had to assume that her body hadn’t been the first. 

Harriet hoped that Flamel wasn’t like her, or like the thing her body used to be. If Flamel was like her then that'd mean a fire had been warped and perverted by human greed, which would mean it could happen to her. If he was like the shell, then he half-lived a pitiful existence. 

Perhaps, thought Harriet, the answer was in the gold. Often rituals intended to produce gold failed, not because gold was particularly special, but because the caster made gold out to be some great and wondrous thing. A sacrifice is never so likely to go wrong as when you don’t know the worth of what you are trading for. McGonagall had even said in one of their first transfiguration classes that transfiguring or, worse, conjuring money was not only illegal but extremely difficult. Harriet stuck out her tongue and blew air out over it. No sound emerged, and her shadow did not so much as twitch.

A shadow can never do as much as the real thing. It disturbed her, somewhat, that she had a shadow at all. Obstructing light instead of emitting it made her wonder if she had more in common with that shadow, now, like she was a pale imitation of herself. It comforted her to see things that she could do that her shadow could not. 

Around a corner came another shadow, stretched and faded with distance from any one torch. The shadow, or rather, its source, sent footsteps echoing towards her. She considered moving, but couldn’t be bothered, in the end. She sighed and looked back to her shadow as its shoulders rose and fell in time with her breathing. 

The shadow came fully into Harriet’s hallway and she startled when at its feet came the attached form of Draco. He was alone, which she had never seen before, and he was slumped with reddened eyes and paler skin. It made his hair look more golden, with the firelight reflecting off it and no flush to eclipse it. He looked up and twitched massively at the sight of her.

“Harriet!” he yelped, “I didn’t, this is not, what are-“ then he paused for a moment and petted his tie like a cat smoothing its fur. “Well. I’m glad it’s you, I suppose. You certainly are the least threatening of my acquaintances. No, you wouldn’t tell anyone of this, you’re much too…you, to do something like that.” Draco was mumbling now and he distractedly walked to Harriet and flopped to the floor beside her. His shadow was now seated right next to hers. It was a bit taller, but it looked tired and, dare she say it, darker than hers. 

“Harriet?” Draco whispered to her, “I’m going to tell you something because I know you have no friends you could share the information with.” Harriet kept her gaze on their shadows. Draco’s was leaning in slightly towards hers, but they did not touch. She nodded and her shadow did the same, in its subtle two-dimensional way.

“Sounds fair,” she replied. Indeed, she had no one to tell or any reason to tell. She did not just give out information for free, after all. And Draco had given her enough entertainment to be worth, maybe, keeping his words secret even if a fair price was offered. 

“See,” Draco began, “yesterday, I was in the Slytherin common room when Leeroy and Brans, they’re second years so you don’t know them, came to talk to me. I found this quite disruptive, of course, as I was seated alongside Crabbe and Goyle next to the fireplace finishing up that charms essay we have due on Monday. But,” here, Draco’s shadow curled up to be smaller, “they wanted us to move, so that they could play Gobstones. Now, their fathers are useful to the ministry but not so useful that they can just order me about and expect me to cower like some mangy mudblood! So, I told them to leave, unless they wanted me to tell my father about their disrespect. And then Brans said,” his shadow’s shoulders shook slightly, “that just because my father is a ministry donor, doesn’t make me anything more than a pansy hiding behind his robes. So I…explained to them their place, and Brans and Leeroy challenged me to a duel on Sunday at Midnight.” Draco let out a shuddering breath and his shadow hunched even closer to Harriet’s. 

“The worst thing is, they declared a paired duel. Said that a Malfoy doesn’t keep friends strong enough to partner with, and that if I came alone they’d just curse me anyways. And they’re right. If I ask anyone else in Slytherin, then my family will owe them for the favor. And my father will have to deal with that at work, which will disappoint him terribly. And everyone will know I embarrassed him, and so I and my family will be ruined. Crabbe or Goyle would do it, but they’re useless at this sort of thing. So I’m going to either be forced to fight two second years alone, and shame my father by losing, or I’ll have to find a partner, and shame my father by incurring a debt.” The shadow straightened and threw its hands into the air. “I should have already had people owing me debts! I don’t understand what happened, people should be begging me for favors, but no one here has needed me for anything. So now I’m reduced to crying to a half-blood who has no idea how politics works anyways. The worst part is, that you’re the only person I know who is too asocial to stab me in the back and go running to the Hogwarts gossip mills with my blathering.”

Harriet looked away from Draco’s shadow to peer into his eyes. His words were furious, his tone disdainful, and his shadow tense, but his eyes were watery and scared. Harriet disliked Draco looking scared. When he was scared, he didn’t feed Harriet loud performances or potions tips or funny stories about students making mistakes. Maybe, since Draco needed help, she could convince him to feed her something worth her assistance. Still, it’d be better if she didn’t have to do anything. She stared into his eyes as he looked at her with ill-concealed nervousness. 

“You’re in danger,” she told him, though she suspected he already knew, “Do you have a plan? Maybe you could, just, not go?” Draco’s eyes went from scared to angry-covering scared instantly and he leaned forward to yell into her face. It wasn’t even a quarter as fierce as Petunia or Vernon could be, and Harriet hadn’t flinched for them. She stared evenly at him as he raged. 

“I've been challenged to a paired duel and I don’t have anyone decent I can ask to be my partner. No, I do not have a plan! I know you were raised under a rock, but people like me must live to a higher standard than simply running away.” He turned away with a huff and crossed his arms tight against his chest. After a moment, his breathing did not slow down.

“Well,” Harriet mused, “I could help you, and I will only hold a debt against you, not your family.” She tugged on one of her braids and carefully considered Draco Malfoy as he sat before her. He had three options, here, though he may not know it. His eyes had lit up and his fists were now clenched in his lap.

“That’s right…you’re irrelevant to the social hierarchy without me. You’re perfect!” he beamed at her and caught her by the shoulders. She carefully kept her flames from his fragile fingertips as he smirked at her with victory quickly replacing his fear. “It’s a paired duel, so you and I could fight against Brans and Leeroy at the same time. It’s a deadly sport of coordination and diplomacy wielded against an opposing faction. So basically, we each must simply use the most debilitating spells we know and try not to get hit. I know for a fact that you’ve studied some adequate hexes during our library hours.”

So, Harriet mused, this was the option he’d picked. She’d need to appear at the duel in person and fight like a witch would do. Still, that kind of effort would require, either before or after, some sort of equal input. She wondered what Draco might decide to offer her for a meal.

“I’ll need something equal in return. Now or after.” She told him solemnly. It wasn’t so much a request, as a warning of what she would take. One way or another, if she fought, she’d get her due. Fires don’t burn without fuel. Her generosity extended only to offering him this chance at all. Draco snorted rudely at her and waved a lax hand in her general direction. He was already standing as if to be on his way, now with a bounce in his step and shoulders thrown back. 

“I hardly care, it’s up to you,” he told her, “Now are you in or not?” Harriet felt that the ability to determine her own payment was more than fair. She wouldn’t have minded choosing from a set of offerings, but this would let her be creative.

“I accept your terms,” she declared with a flare of gathering heat deep within her, “Now, Draco, tell me what to do to Brans and Leeroy.”  
*****  


Saturday morning brought with it the usual moaning and cussing from Harriet’s roommates as she threw herself out of bed at dawn to race out into the castle proper on the hunt for breakfast. Some Saturdays she even went to the Great Hall for human food. Weekends usually kept students abed until hours after Harriet had finished eating, and in the Great Hall Harriet could wave to Albus and watch him wave back and smile at her. She’d considered going to talk to him, but then she’d have to get near to the purple professor that made her want to puke. Albus was not worth puking. 

After breakfast, today comprised of an entire platter of bacon, Harriet skipped to the library. She made a game of it by bowing to every suit of armor, as she had seen some portraits do, and laughing as they creaked and squealed as they tried to bow back. Several saw her and waved their weapons threateningly at her and so Harriet quickly vacated the floor from which she had appropriated her axe that one fine morning weeks ago. 

The rest of her Saturday was spent in the library, reading and waiting for Hermione to come pick her up for their Girls Night. Harriet wasn’t sure what would happen, but she was excited to get into a part of the castle she was usually locked out of. Also, Hermione had promised to teach her things so she’d have plenty to consume over the course of the Girls Night. 

The sun sank from the tops of the library windows down to the edge of the forested mountains as Harriet went through her pile of alchemy texts. None shed light on the strange existence of Nicholas Flamel and his wife, though most seemed to support the hypothesis that he was just as alive as any other human. Harriet took this with a grain of salt, as many humans also would say that she was just as humanly alive as any human. She shook her head sadly down at yet another shoddy calculation for how hot a fire should be for melting various metals. Humans were truly blind, in so many ways, for all that they had eyes and she used to not. 

“Harriet!” Hermione was calling for her in a loud whisper from the end of the aisle Harriet was seated in. The sun had set roughly an hour ago, so Hermione was probably about on time. Knowing Hermione, she was exactly on time. Harriet eyed Hermione’s wristwatch hungrily. 

Harriet stood to follow Hermione and together they walked to Hermione’s dormitory, one in silence and the other chattering endlessly about whether or not she’d gotten an Outstanding on their last potions assignment. 

The entrance was exactly as Harriet remembered, with a scowling lady in pink who wouldn’t let them in without Hermione stating the password. Once given her toll, she swung open and Hermione ushered Harriet through the doorway and into another world. 

Hermione’s Dormitory was bursting at the seams with red and gold and humans. Everything seemed to be moving, gamboling about like candlelight. Students were talking in little bundles, cheering on tiny moving baubles and chess pieces, or, in some rare cases, studying in the eye of this storm of human energy. A paper crane flew right in front of Harriet’s face and she instinctively snapped it out of the air with a clean bite. 

“Harriet!” Hermione screeched, “spit that out right now! I’ve told you before, you cannot eat paper!” She was grabbing at Harriet’s chin and if the crane wasn’t in her mouth, Harriet would be cussing at her. Hermione scrabbled at her face even as she ‘swallowed’ with a quick flood of flame up her gullet. 

“Hermione, what in Merlin’s name is the Dumbass-who-Lived doing in our common room?” In all of Hermione’s panic, neither she nor Harriet had noticed the approach of a taller young man, apparently the representative of a steadily growing audience of silent and staring kids. 

“It’s none of your business, McLaggen. She’s my friend. There’s nothing in the school rules prohibiting me from inviting her to visit until curfew.” Hermione was now standing slightly in-between Harriet and the disruptive boy. Her hands were on her hips and her eyes were flashing. Oddly, instead of backing away from the superior predator the boy smirked and leaned in closer. 

“Oh right, I forgot, the buck-toothed know-it-all only ever managed to make friends with Harry Potter herself. Hey, what’s it feel like to be babysitting the dumbest orphan in the castle? Be careful, Granger, or you’ll start to look just as poorly-bred as your pet mongrel.” Hermione twitched violently and Harriet was quite done with this ridiculous human posturing. As Hermione took a deep breath and raised a finger to point directly into McWhatever’s face, Harriet drew back her foot and then, focusing as much heat and energy into her leg muscles as possible, kicked the fleshbag in the shin as hard as she dared. The silly boy fell to the floor with a yelp, clutching at his leg. Hermione, now very pale, grabbed Harriet’s arm and started yanking her over to a staircase on the other side of the common room. 

“You are so lucky none of the prefects are here! McLaggen won’t tell them about this, he’s much too prideful, but, oh, Harriet, if anyone else had seen!” Harriet trotted after Hermione as she was led up the staircase and bundled into a dorm room designed very similarly to her own, only with three red and gold beds rather than six blue and bronze ones. Two of the beds were tucked into a maelstrom of posters with sets of slightly older boys dancing in eerie unison. The other bed, where Hermione was leading her, had a calendar as big as the bed next to it on one side and a whiteboard on the other. Each wall hanging was covered in what Harriet recognized as Hermione’s neat scrawl in various colors. 

Hovering near the much pinker and shinier parts of the room were two girls, one of which Harriet vaguely recognized and another which she knew very well. They were staring at her with disgust. Hermione pushed Harriet down onto her bed, and then looked her in the eyes with a pout. 

“Harriet. You are here this evening because of exactly that sort of behavior. Eating paper does not present a professional demeanor,” she scolded gently. Behind her, the two girls groaned and scoffed, gesturing at Harriet. 

“Hermione?” Harriet interrupted. The girl looked hopeful for a solid moment.

“Yes, Harriet?” she said, leaning forward with anticipation etched into her whole body.

“Why is Padma here? Why does she get two beds?” Harriet asked. Hermione slumped and snarled. Behind her, Padma sat up straight with her mouth open and a truly murderous expression. 

“Actually, Harriet,” Hermione began with a pained glance back at Padma, “this is Padma’s twin sister Parvati. I suppose you haven’t been introduced…” she trailed off as Parvati-not-Padma strode forwards with the other girl right behind her, both with their arms crossed. 

“Hermione,” began the unknown girl as Parvati simply glared, “what is Potter doing tracking filth into our room?”

“Yeah,” began Parvati, “my sister told me all about her and how gross she is. I didn’t believe her about how dumb she is, though. Until now.” Hermione was nearly vibrating by now, and Harriet could no longer see her face as she’d turned to look at her roommates. 

“Well then, I suppose since my opinion doesn’t count in our room, I’ll just take Harriet elsewhere. I hope neither of you drank much water this evening.” With that, Hermione grabbed a bag from beside her bed, took Harriet’s hand in the other, and marched them into the bathroom, closing and locking the door behind them. Immediately Harriet could hear the other two girls yelling and banging at the door, which Hermione shot a filthy look and moved them away from. 

Hermione ushered Harriet to a stool set in front of a mirror. She looked the same as always, as far as she could tell. She couldn’t begin to imagine what humans were so fussed about when they looked at her. There was no discernable difference she could note besides the scar on her forehead. None of her flames were even remotely visible. Hermione set the bag on the counter next to the sink below the mirror and began removing items from it one after the other in little bottles and packages. She meticulously lined them up by some system Harriet could not discern.

“So, Harriet,” Hermione said as she settled into lecture-mode, “we’re going to try and clean you up and establish a routine for you to go through every morning before classes.” She gestured to the mirror-Harriet. “As you are there are a few things which might help you to make a better impression. Now, how often do you wash your face?” Hermione asked Harriet’s reflection, with Hermione’s reflection making odd eye contact with real-Harriet despite not being Hermione. Harriet was getting a headache the longer she looked. She scrunched her eyes shut before she answered. 

“Never.” 

“Ah.” Hermione sounded pained. “Well, I suppose that explains why there’s always…substances, on your face and hands. Well then, that’s the first thing we can do! Now, let’s practice face-washing right now.” Hermione reached over and turned on the sink, which Harriet eyed warily. She did not want water near her face. This was coming to be a very unpleasant exercise already. Hermione grabbed something from her bag and looked over at Harriet with a smile that immediately vanished as they made eye contact. Hermione reached over to Harriet for a moment, stopping as she realized that Harriet had already scooted away from the sink too far for Hermione’s arm. 

“Harriet…” said Hermione, brow furrowed, “how about you come over here and practice? We’re just going to wet the cloth and then gently rub it over your face. Nothing too scary, right?” Hermione was smiling now, but also seemed nervous for some reason. Harriet figured that even if Hermione tried to shove her face into the sink she’d be able to burn her and escape. She wouldn’t get anything but her hand wet. Standing, Harriet slowly approached the sink and Hermione. The running water sound was very steady, with no burbles or drops, just a constant hiss. Hermione handed a dark blue towel-cloth to her, mimicking Harriet’s slowness. Harriet kept the girl in the corner of her eye as she, darting her hand forward, got a splash of water on the cloth layered over her hand and quickly pulled it back. Then, she startled as Hermione reached across her and turned off the sink. 

“Good job, Harriet! Now, just wipe the wet cloth over your face and try not to miss any spots.” This didn’t strike Harriet as too horrendous. She eyed Hermione for one last moment, searching for an apparently non-existent hint of malice, and then shoved the washcloth beneath her left glasses lens. It wasn’t bad. It was warm, and nothing wet was getting through her skin. Anything more would be too much but just a washcloth was fine enough. Harriet went to town and scrubbed everywhere above her shoulders she could reach. Eyebrows, chin, ear flaps, and scar-ridges, she wanted to get this over with. When she looked back at Hermione, her glasses were a bit smudged with water. Hermione was half-smiling, half-grimacing down at Harriet’s hands. The washcloth, Harriet noticed, was smeared liberally with grey ash and dust. 

“Very, um, very nice Harriet.” Hermione’s smile slowly became more genuine as she scanned over Harriet’s face. “Yes, I think if you do that every morning you’ll have much less, er, grime, to deal with. Now!” Hermione looked back to her line of little bottles and doo-dads. She picked up a hairbrush, only this one was cylindrical instead of rectangular like Aunt Petunia’s. “This is a hairbrush I got for you. I figured that you, um, must not have one. How about you brush your hair for me while I clean up your clothing?” Hermione passed Harriet the brush with a careless hand, already leaning over to look at Harriet’s robe and skirt. Harriet took the brush with a grin. She’d been given a gift! Maybe not a gift for eating, but an offering is an offering. With practiced fingers, Harriet pulled out her hair ties and unwove her twin braids. She could see in the mirror as Hermione eyed her waist-length hair with wide eyes. No flames were escaping, she was sure, so she figured Hermione was just…no, she had no idea why Hermione was staring. It didn’t matter, anyways. Harriet was too excited about having her own hairbrush to stall. She shoved the brush into the tips of her hair and started brushing her way up, bit by bit, careful not to tear out any more hair than she was forced to. 

“You’re very good at that. What made you stop brushing your hair?” Hermione’s reflection was half-smiling at her again and Harriet was comforted that the sound of her voice came from the opposite direction of the mirror. 

“Mmm. Like you said. No brush,” she mumbled. She finished off by brushing her bangs. They twisted and curled into deeper whorls with every stroke until they fell over her forehead like the burnt edges of paper. Hermione had stopped smiling again as she picked at Harriet’s robe with downcast eyes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Little flame, little flame. 
> 
> Silly, fair and furious little flame.


	16. The Drop

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harriet and Draco deal with a schoolyard tussle. There was never any doubt who would win!

Midnight on Sunday  
*****

Harriet stood next to Draco in the dead-end dungeon where the duel was to take place. They had ten minutes until the duel was set to start, and the other two boys had yet to arrive. Crab and Boil were leaning silently against a patch of stone wall beneath the only torch in the entire hall, but Draco was muttering spells under his breath in-between anxious interrogations of Harriet’s preparation. 

“Yes, but are you certain that you’re ready for this? You weren’t raised like a proper pureblood, but I need you to pull your weight.” 

Draco was, seemingly compulsively, pacing back and forth. He kept sweeping his hands through his hair like the birds Harriet used to watch from the Dursley’s window. 

“I said I’ll do it. So I will. Duh. It’s what you’re payin’ me for,” she told Draco. He was being very confusing, needing this spelled out. He had agreed to feed her, and so she would burn what she was fed and fulfill his wish. He might as well ask the torches if they were sure they could light their hallways. 

“You look nice, Harriet,” interrupted Crab. Boil nodded. Draco stopped his pacing and looked her over with a quizzical quirk to his brow. 

“Huh,” he said, dumbfounded, “well, it looks like you finally learned how hairbrushes work. I suppose I should give you more credit.”

“Flirting with the half-blood spawn of a blood-traitor, now, Malfoy?” sneered a voice from the other end of the hall. Harriet ignored the two silhouettes rounding the corner and glanced curiously over at Crab and Boil. She wasn’t sure exactly what that insult meant, and so was forced to wonder which of the boys was being referred to. “How about you tell us why the bloody hell the-Girl-who-Lived is here?”

Draco scoffed. “I thought it would be obvious,” he said to the two approaching boys, “even to buffoons like you. She’s my dueling partner.” The two boys Harriet was going to teach came into the light and stopped a few meters away from them. They looked perfectly different, yet the same. One had light hair, the other dark, one was taller, one shorter, but each one had a crinkled tie and scruffy bangs and smiles filled with an adolescent’s milk-teeth. 

“You brought the dumbest Ravenclaw in the castle to a duel? That’s cheap, even for a Malfoy.” The lighter boy sneered at them and peeked over at his partner to see how his comment was received. The darker boy laughed and nodded, and this seemed to signal the lighter boy to puff up his boyish frame and gesture at Harriet. “I mean really, Malfoy, if you wanted to see her cursed into sludge you could have just asked us nicely.” The two laughed, but even as Draco flushed slightly and leaned towards Harriet he also smirked and crossed his arms.

“Oh Brans,” he cooed, “how precious! You think you can take on the girl who defeated the Dark Lord as a mere infant. Potter herself, who is better at practical spellwork than anyone else in our year or, likely, yours. Did I mention,” here Draco gestured grandly at her, “that she agreed without question to come here tonight and use several very interesting hexes against you in my name? Honestly, you’d think with that neither of you had ever had friends before. Sorry, I meant to say ‘friends worth having’.” Harriet took the gesture as her cue and stepped closer to Draco, drawing her wand and pointing it at Brans. “Not yet, Harriet,” called Draco to her. She lowered her wand. Duels were very strange, vocal events apparently. She’d just try to do as Draco said and keep her reward in mind. Now Draco was smiling and the two boys were scowling at them. They had their wands out as well. 

“I knew the Malfoys were pathetic, but I never figured you for blood-traitors,” snarled the darker-haired boy. Leeroy, presumably. Draco’s smile fell and he raised his wand slightly. Harriet mimicked him.

“The Malfoys respect power. And Harriet is not a muggle-loving fool like her legacy would imply to the simple-minded followers of a dead man. But I don’t need to explain my superior choices to you. I’ll simply show you, if you’d hurry up and start the match. Unless you’re set to forfeit?” Draco’s wand spit a few green sparks in time with his harsh words. 

“You wish we’d forfeit, you cowardly ponce. Let’s get this over with. Remember the terms. No matter the outcome, we do not rat each other out. We fight to the forfeit or the disablement of one team. Otherwise, nothing is cheating.” Draco nodded once and glanced at Harriet. This glance was probably a prompt of some sort. Harriet stepped forward.

“The terms upon which Draco and I agreed are as follows,” Harriet stated as clearly as possible to the air just between the two boy’s heads. “On this Sunday night at Midnight, I am to defeat his enemies in combat. Your forfeit or debilitating injury would fulfill these terms.” Brans and Leeroy started at her for a moment before bursting out into laughter. 

“Ha! Little Potty think’s she’s scary. What say we take those pigtails of hers for trophies? Show our fathers what sort of company Malfoy Jr. keeps.” 

“As if you two goons know your wands from spoons. Under the terms I call the start!” Draco shouted, moments before he cast the first spell at the now silent and ready boys. “Flipendo!” 

Leeroy toppled backwards with an ‘oof’, and Brans immediately fired back with a spell Harriet could not quite make out. Harriet dove against Draco, knocking him out of the way of the spellshot and raising her wand to return fire. Beneath her, Draco yelped from the fall. They’d have only moments before the next spell came along, and neither she nor Draco knew any shields just yet. Harriet shouted “Nox!” at the top of her lungs. The torch on the wall smothered down to embers, and she could just hear Crab and Boil gasp. The light was terribly faint, now, and Harriet could see her targets eyes blinking and moving aimlessly about. They couldn’t see her now. But she could always see them, no matter the dark. She took a breath to cast another spell when Draco stood up next to her.

“Diffindo!” he called out into the dark. It got one of the boys, Harriet was no longer sure which was which, on the arm. He screeched and fell back, clutching the limb. Next to her, Draco yelled “ha!” just in time for the boy left standing to cast.

“Petrificus totalis!” called out the boy, and Draco went stiff, falling forward with an ominous crunch. The boy with the cut arm aimed his wand at Harriet and she moved to disable him. In fact, using the exact same spell. She’d never used the petrification spell before, but having seen it done once as well as having studied it gave her just enough magic to make it happen. The bloody boy toppled back and his partner growled, the whites of his eyes glinting in the half-light of the remaining torch around the corner. It was too late, though.

Harriet ducked down before the remaining target could move and cast as powerful of a “finite” as she could manage on Draco. He scrambled to his knees with a hand-up from Harriet, moaning and clutching his profusely bleeding nose. He looked at Harriet for a moment before his eyes went wide and Harriet ducked down even as Draco opened his mouth to speak. The warning was barely in time. Whatever spell flashed over her head, she could feel it ruffle her bangs away from her forehead.

Whipping around away from Draco, Harriet shot another petrification spell at her target as he moved to, presumably, release his own partner. He halted in his steps with a growled shield spell, and Harriet kept casting, trying to keep him from unfreezing the other boy. She pummeled him with spells, simple flipendos and diffindos, but enough to keep him in one place while Draco pulled his act together. Except, he seemed to be taking his sweet time. 

“Come on, Potter! Quit prancing about and put that mutt in his place!” Draco jeered from behind her. His voice was muffled, presumably from his nose-blood getting in his throat, but Harriet could hear him well enough. She snuck a look behind herself only to see that Draco had retreated altogether and was leaning against Crab and Boil with his sleeve covering his nose. That probably meant he was done fighting. 

Harriet was getting very annoyed, very bored. Draco had a point, really. It was well past time for Harriet to hold up her end of their bargain. She turned back to look at her opponent and saw that he’d stepped closer while her back was turned. There was what could only be a spell on the tip of his tongue, a furious glare on his scraped-up face, but she’d make sure it never fired. That was the deal. 

Harriet reached out, grabbed the boy’s wrist, and thrust her wand forward. Without a word, pretending the burn came from her wand, she heated up the hand around the boy’s wrist just enough to char away the flesh until she felt her fingertips hit meat.

He screamed like an animal caught inside a steel jaw trap. Falling to his knees, his fingernails scrabbled at Harriet’s sleeve as he pumped his feet against the stones, trying desperately to get away from Harriet without touching her. Harriet didn’t resist, just walked with him as he scrambled backwards, letting the flames spread down his hand. The wailing echoed throughout the dungeons. His skin was consumed beneath her grip as she drifted her palm down his limb and burned as she went, until she let go with a final twist against his fingertips. She came away with a sticky peel of fried skin stuck to her hand, an annoying, but harmless, gunk. A flick of her wrist sent the glob splatting against the cold stone of the floor. It sizzled. The boy flopped onto his side near the lump of his skin, clutching his hand and sobbing as he writhed against the stones. The extremity was blackened where it wasn’t an angry crimson or shiny yellow. Harriet took a moment to pick up her opponent’s wand and pocket it. She’d eat it later. Then she turned to look back at Draco where he was leaning against Crab and Boil cradling his nosebleed. His eyes were like a startled owl’s. 

“I’d like my payment, now.”

Draco visibly began to shake. His eyes were blown wide, and Crab and Boil were clenching their fists and pulling him back away from her. He had his hands in the air, and he kept his eyes unwavering on her face like he was waiting for her to do something. Then, Crab and Boil hoisted Draco onto his feet and the three of them were sprinting away out of the dark before Harriet could so much as ask them why they were running.  
*****  
Notes: Alchemy and Fire

Everything I’ve read says they’re the same thing. There can be no stone without the flame.

“This fire burns the material not at all, nor separates anything from it, nor divides nor puts apart the parts pure and impure, as is told by all Philosophers, but converts the whole subject into purity…This fire is the epitome and abridgement of the Work in its entirety, taking no other thing else, or very little, and this same fire introduces itself and is of mediocre heat; for with this little fire the whole Work is perfect, and all due and necessary sublimation achieved together… which converts the material into the Stone of the Wise” - Pontanus, The Epistle on the Philosophic Fire

Alchemy is change, is making something from other. But, humans are greedy. They want to use the flame to gain more than given. Doesn’t work like that, something’s gotta feed the flame. Pure, impure, that is silly human nonsense. Something is burned, and the ashes are the Work. Fire is fire, what makes it special? The thing it is fed, but also what the flame agrees to grant. What could convince a flame to trade 600+ years of life? What could be worth consuming? 

I can’t think of anything other than 600 years worth of lives. But not necessarily human ones.

Unicorns are being killed in the forest. And dragons are poached to the point humans are trying to protect them. The phoenix is fire-ish, and renews for lifetimes. I wonder what Flamel had? Or maybe his wife, Perenelle? Women have tons of lives inside them. The Flamels never did reproduce.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And the penny drops.


	17. Hermione Interlude

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hermione fetches a light before searching out the monsters under the bed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, school is kicking my ass this week. Hopefully I'll have more writing time in a few days.

Hermione’s feet went pitter-pat against the castle floor, and her hair kept flipping about to stick into her mouth, which was parted a bit with her running and panic and whirling-dervish thoughts.

It was time. She had to find Dumbledore, they were out of time, and for some reason the teachers weren’t doing anything. It wasn’t right! Hermione knew, had been told over and over, when something bad is going on to get an adult and they’d take care of everything, so she had to find Dumbledore as soon as she possibly could. He could call the magic police and alert the teachers and go to stop Professor Snape and…maybe even whoever Snape was working for. His master, who Hermione thought might just be someone that could seriously hurt Harriet.

You know who.

It all made sense. All of her reading, all of her eavesdropping and investigating. And now, down at Hagrid’s hut, she’d gotten the final clue.

The man, the man who’d gambled away the dragon’s egg, he’d gotten the secret of how to get by Fluffy from Hagrid, the poor man. It all made sense, how Snape’d had a dog’s bite on his leg right after the troll broke in and distracted everybody. How he’d been bullying old Professor Quirrel for information, even going so far as to break into his office. Hermione had seen the doorways to his classroom and his ransacked office and they’d looked like they’d been ripped apart. She’d overheard whispers from some older Gryffindors about what difficult spellwork it was, to summon magical fire into the shape of a blade without setting off the wards it was chopping to bits. No student here could have done that, but a teacher could. And Snape, whispers told, had once had something to do with you-know-who. 

Who else would want the Philosopher’s stone? Someone here wanted the elixir of life, that’s why that same…entity had been killing unicorns in the forest. Neville had barely been coherent when he was explaining what happened, but he’d told Hermione especially that the thing he’d seen was drinking the unicorn’s blood, that the centaur thought there were things hiding in the castle, things that looked human but weren’t alive nor dead. 

He had to have meant you-know-who. He had to. And Dumbledore was the only man you-know-who had ever feared.

Hermione threw herself around the corner, skidding to a stop so that Professor McGonagall wouldn’t see that she’d been running in the hallways. The transfiguration classroom’s door was slightly propped open, and Hermione could see that her favorite professor was at her desk grading essays. Hermione speed-walked down the aisle and her footfalls raised Professor McGonagall’s interest. She looked up to Hermione over her spectacles with a pinched mouth but an open expression. Hermione answered more questions in class than anybody, and only Harriet ever transfigured things faster than her. McGonagall would obviously trust her, and then she’d fetch Dumbledore, and the stone would be safe.

“Ms.Granger, what brings you to my classroom?” Professor McGonagall asked her briskly. She’d looked back down to the essay she was grading once she’d seen it was Hermione.

“Professor McGonagall, I need to find Professor Dumbledore, someone is going to steal the Philosopher’s Stone!” McGonagall’s head jerked back upwards and she pierced Hermione with a suddenly furious look.

“How do you know about that?” she demanded. Hermione startled back. It wasn’t her fault that all the clues were there, of course she’d figured it out! Why was a Professor yelling at her for being clever? Then, Professor McGonagall’s nostrils flared. “Ms.Granger,” she said, “I don’t know how you have found out about this matter, nor do I want to know. The protections in place are perfectly adequate to prevent theft, and it is in yours and my best interest that you put this matter out of your mind entirely. I expected better of you, Ms.Granger.” 

Hermione’s eyes were burning. Her favorite Professor was disappointed in her and that alone would be enough to make her cry. More than that though, her Professor wasn’t listening! She’d told her to not try to learn things, and that the things she knew were wrong without even hearing her out! Why would she do that? Hermione wasn’t just flushing out of shame, no, she was frustrated! She was disappointed, in an adult! In her own teacher! Obviously adults are supposed to know better than her, and maybe McGonagall was right, but how could McGonagall know for sure without hearing Hermione’s side to find out if she was wrong? Hermione looked down to the floor so Professor McGonagall wouldn’t see her eyes watering.

“Professor, please, this is urgent, I need to speak with Professor Dumbledore, please.” Hermione stated all of this the floor. She heard a heavy sigh coming from McGonagall, and then papers shuffling. When she peeked upwards it was to see McGonagall gathering her work and standing to leave.

“Professor Dumbledore has an engagement at the Ministry for the day and will likely not return until long after your curfew.” Hermione felt her stomach jump up into her throat. Dumbledore was gone? “Now, Ms.Granger, I believe it is time you returned to your common room and your studying.” With that, McGonagall started walking up to her office. Hermione stared after her in silent disbelief. Dumbledore wasn’t in the castle. Snape would have to be an idiot not to take this chance to steal the stone. And now, right when it mattered the most, McGonagall wouldn’t listen to her. There were no adults left she could trust.

Ever since Halloween, with the troll in the bathroom, Hermione had been wrestling with the realization that monsters weren’t just silly made-up things vanquished with a pat to the head and an assurance from her parents. Yet, somehow, she’d been glad that monsters weren’t just a nightmare anymore. Like by knowing they were real it forced them to be contained into a definition Hermione could study and understand and beat. Being brave against monsters was so much easier when they would walk up to you plain and simple, grey and smelly, and be vanquished with spells and courage anyone could have.

Then she’d been made to look Harriet Potter in the eyes and tell her what her own parent’s names had been.

Monsters were terrifying, not just in the way trolls were, but in the way a single man could take away Harriet’s family so completely she didn’t even know her parent’s names.

Everyone said Harriet Potter was stupid, and cowardly for not being in Gryffindor like her parents, and dirty and weird, and that’s why she’d only made friends with the Gryffindor know-it-all. But Hermione had seen the truth, even when the others wanted to ignore it. Harriet had charged into the bathroom because Hermione had screamed. She’d thrown herself at the troll, shoved Hermione out of the way, and when Hermione had been crouching beneath plumbing and crying in fear, Harriet had stood her ground and defeated the monster. Harriet had looked so tiny crouched in front of the troll, and the club that nearly took her head off was bigger than the girl’s entire body. She looked more like a nine-year-old than a girl the same age as Hermione. Then, the air flow from the club had blown Harriet’s bangs from her forehead and Hermione had seen the scar.

Harriet’s scar really was dreadful. It scraped all down from her hairline through her eyebrows a bit, stopping just above her eyes. It looked like lightning suspended in storm clouds, all big and branched and dangerous. Harriet had faced a monster at one year old and barely survived. 

Hermione turned away from McGonagall’s office and sprinted out the door, uncaring if McGonagall saw. She had to get to the library, where Harriet was no doubt sitting and devouring some tome about whatever odd thing she’d decided to obsess over for the day. She was special like that. 

Every moment she wasted on her run to the library, every time she had to stop and rest, she cursed herself. Books and cleverness, magic and words, none of it mattered if she couldn’t bloody well catch her breath through a stitch in her side! Hermione had gotten grades that weren’t perfect, taken second-place trophies in spelling-bees, and she’d thought that’s what self-disgust felt like. This, this was so much worse. Every moment that Snape got closer to the stone, closer to escaping before Dumbledore got back to stop him, she was failing at the most important exam of her life. Hermione gritted her teeth and pushed off from the wall yet again, resuming her run to the library. She had to do this. She had to. You-know-who, the man who gave Harriet that awful scar, he could not rise again. 

The sight of the library door and Harriet at a table just beyond it nearly made Hermione cry with relief. 

Over their time in the library, Hermione liked to think she’d figured out most of what made Harriet tick. In essence, Harriet was the most anti-social person Hermione had ever met. She didn’t much care about anything other than reading and, oddly enough, exploring forbidden places. Hermione dreaded the day Harriet remembered that the Forbidden Forest was, er, off-limits. Besides that Harriet was intense and twitchy, with a list of quirks a mile long. She made a great academic conversation partner, but Hermione really was going to strangle her one of these days just for being so…so…thick! Really, the number of times she’d caught Harriet ripping a page out of a book or licking the bookshelves or calling people rude names, it boggled the mind. Still, for every time they fought, there was another time when Harriet would look Hermione in the eyes with a fearsome expression and it would remind her that Harriet had never, not once, ever thought of Hermione as just some bossy teachers-pet show-off. Friendships had been founded on much less than that. 

Today, Hermione saw as she hurriedly approached, Harriet was reading something titled “The Epistle on the Philosophic Fire”, which was a leather-bound book that Hermione was honestly surprised Harriet had managed to carry. She didn’t bother sitting, simply putting a hand over the page Harriet was reading and waiting for her to look up. With most people Hermione might have touched their shoulder, but Harriet was high-strung on the best of days, and that was coming from Hermione. Harriet, even with the more gentle interruption, pulled her gaze upwards in a way that looked more like a neck-spasm than any sort of natural movement. Her glasses were smudged again, but other than that her face was almost completely clean and her twin braids were shiny and smooth. Those big green eyes pinned Hermione’s face for a long moment before drifting to the right and dilating slightly. That was another problem with the younger girl, she had the attention span of a gnat and no manners to pretend to listen even if she wasn’t.

“Harriet!” she whispered, prompting the girl’s eyes to snap back to meet her own, “I need your help, come with me. I’ll explain on the way.” Harriet’s face remained as blank as ever, but her eyes lit up a tad like they did when Hermione told her something she hadn’t known before. It didn’t take a genius to figure out that curiosity was the best way to entice Harriet. The smaller girl jumped from her chair, being too small to reach the ground otherwise, and grabbed her ratty messenger bag. Hermione was momentarily conflicted, tempted to remind Harriet that she was supposed to bring her book to the book return, but today of all days there was no time for another row with her friend over trivialities. Hermione wordlessly led Harriet out of the library where they might speak normally on the way to Gryffindor Tower. 

Out in the corridor Hermione picked up the pace a bit, not so much she couldn’t speak, but enough to save some precious moments. Harriet, despite her much shorter legs, kept easy pace with Hermione using a strange, but efficient, loping stride. Those green eyes were taking in Hermione, and she wondered if her grumpy friend had noticed her state of panic and disarray. 

“Harriet,” she said as loud as she dared, “we’re going to my dorm to get Ron and Neville. Professor Dumbledore has left the castle for the day, and the thief knows how to get through the third floor corridor to the Philosopher’s Stone. We have to slow him down until Dumbledore returns. I need your help, Harriet. I promise, after this I’ll get you so many sweets you’ll get a stomach-ache, but I just need you to trust me.” Harriet was already nodding. She hadn’t even hesitated. How could anyone think this girl was a coward? Or dumb? Hermione beamed at Harriet for a moment yet before breaking into a run, yelling “Come on!” behind her. As she’d hoped, Harriet ran alongside her immediately, and kept pace the whole way to Gryffindor Tower without a word of complaint.

Hermione left Harriet outside the tower when she went to collect Ron and Neville. When she came back out with her boys, she was half-surprised to see Harriet still there, and not remotely surprised to see Harriet chewing on something Hermione would rather not gain the chance to identify.

“Her!?” demanded Ron. Hermione sighed. She’d known this would happen, but honestly this was not the time for squabbling!

“Yes, Ronald, her! She took down that troll in the bathroom and she already knows everything we do. She can help. Now, we need to get to the third floor corridor, quickly!” Ron was still scowling with his hands shoved into the pockets of his much-too-short trousers, but Neville nodded through his queasy expression and got a sort of determined scrunch around his eyebrows.

“Hello,” said Harriet, seemingly as an afterthought. Ron groaned heavily and rubbed at his nose. With that, Hermione realized she really needed to make some friends that weren’t completely thick. Neville was starting to look like her only hope of making it through this, and that was just sad.


	18. The Fourth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harriet murks a not-guy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Writing this chapter was hell. Like I hated every moment of writing this and I don't know why. There's probably at least one big error in this, just let me know and I'll fix it, but there's absolutely no way I'm going to reread this shit again after I've spent hours and hours and hours editing it just trying to make it decent enough to post.
> 
> At least now I can finally move on the writing the good stuff that I actually care about doing right!
> 
> Please comment btw because at this point the story is going to start really changing from what's in the books and I want to know what makes sense to people, what they're hoping to see, etc.

She was so hungry. She was underfed, raging with heat and fury on too little fuel, yet she’d never been quite so hungry as this. Draco still hadn’t paid her. Everything in her was banked high, flaming at blue at the edges like an oil fire, and now Hermione had brought her back to the third floor corridor with some weird rant about how the Philosopher’s Stone was going to be stolen and they had to make that not happen.

She was going to devour anything in the third floor corridor that so much as looked at her funny.

Hermione pointed her wand to the lock on the door and whispered “Alohomora”. There was a metallic click and the doorknob twitched slightly. Hermione nodded and looked back to Harriet.

Harriet shuffled ahead of Ron and Neville and silently took hold of the doorknob. The door opened easily for her, and she pushed it inwards and stepped forward. She walked through the doorway ahead of the children behind her, so as to keep the fragile humans away from the cerberus. She kept her wand in her left hand by her hip, and her right hand extended in front of her with heat pooling in her fingertips.

The great Cerberus was sleeping peacefully next to a self-strumming harp. The melody was obviously a lullaby, and presumably a good one to be keeping the beast asleep.

“Of course!” whispered Hermione, “Hagrid said he’d told the man in the pub who gave him the dragon’s egg that Fluffy is very susceptible to music.”

Harriet perked up. She whipped around to face the three humans. “A dragon’s egg? Tell me everything.”

“Yeah,” whispered Ron, “we went and watched it hatch and everything. It was all hot and metal-looking, then this baby dragon just popped out.”

“A hot metal ball? Was Hagrid keeping it warm?”

“Yeah, why?”

“Oh. Well I guess I’ve already seen one, is all. The purple professor had one in his office on a fire-pillow.”

“Guys?” Neville whispered in a trembling voice, “the music’s stopped.”

Harriet slowly turned around to the ominously silent room. The dog, black and gargantuan, was peering back at her with half-lidded eyes, glinting out of the dark. One by one the heads rose from the floor, ears twitching and shoulder-blades uncoiling. Then it bared yellow-sharp teeth and began to snarl.

Harriet ran forward to stand between the kids and the dog. It growled like thunder over hills, and all three heads were fixated on Harriet.

“Jump!” screamed Ron from behind her. Harriet did not turn around to watch, too focused on how the massive mutt was hoisting itself up onto its feet. She had to assume that the humans were going down the trapdoor. 

The dog growled for one second more, and then began barking and lunging forward. Harriet responded in kind. She barked as loud and deep as she could as she slowly stepped backwards, keeping her eyes locked with the center head’s glare. The Cerberus slowed, and the head to the right looked confused. Only the leftmost head barked along with Harriet. 

Harriet felt her heel touch the edge of the trapdoor and grinned. Mimicry really was the best way to communicate with mammals.

She took her time sitting down at the edge of the trapdoor, smoothing her skirt to rest beneath her instead of bunching up. Her feet dangled down into darkness. With one last look to the lunging mutt inches away from biting off her head, she pushed off from her seat on the floor and fell into the sightless black. 

Harriet counted as she fell. The darkness surrounded her unbroken for four empty seconds, then shattered into an eruption of light. It was like she’d fallen through some invisible barrier blocking the torches from illuminating anything above standing height from the floor. Harriet caught a brief glimpse of Hermione, Ron, and Neville sitting on some thick green vines before she hit the plant herself, only to sink straight through. Below the plant was a few feet further of air ending in a stone floor like any other in the castle, lit by a second set of torches set into the wall beneath the plant. From here, the slithering vines made up the ceiling. It was odd, Harriet thought from her spot flopped over onto her back, to look up at the roof and see three pairs of shoes dangling down. 

“Harriet!” screamed Hermione. Harriet retrospectively noted that all three of the humans had been screaming since around when Harriet jumped. She’d been distracted by the weird plant.

“Hurry up and fall through! It’s only a few feet,” she called up to them. Sitting up, she winced and covered her ears as Ron bellowed back down at her.

“WE’RE. NOT. HERE. ON. PURPOSE. IT’S. STRANGLING. US!” There was a pause, and Harriet watched Ron’s feet furiously twitch and swirl. “YOU DUMB BINT!”

“Ronald!” screamed Hermione. Harriet huffed up at the twitchy ceiling. Ron was very rude. She flopped backwards again. Now it felt like she was stargazing. Except with feet instead of stars.

“Guys, shut up!” Of all people, it was Neville who yelled at Ron and Hermione. The sound from above Harriet vanished. The vines slowed down their movements near simultaneously. “This is Devil’s Snare,” whispered the oddly confident boy, “It reacts to movement and sound, like an animal makes when it’s trapped. It’s carnivorous. It’ll only get tighter if we struggle. Most gardeners manage it with fire. I don’t know any spells for that, though…”

Harriet tucked her arms beneath her head and smiled. The feet stuck in the vines were getting covered by foliage, by now. The movements of the ceiling were calmly entrancing. 

“Oh, I can’t reach my wand, I could make bluebottle flames, but I don’t, I can’t, Harriet!” Hermione squealed from above her head. The vines to Harriet’s upper left started twisting a tad faster.

“Mmm?” Harriet inquired.

“Harriet, get us out of here! Honestly, I know you can make fire so hurry up!” This time Hermione was using her scary-shrill whisper, the one that’s quiet but still hurts Harriet’s ears. She sighed and laboriously stood up. The vines were very high above her head, so she’d have to plan this carefully. Harriet shrugged out of her outer robe and dropped it onto the floor in front of her in a messy ball. She squatted down in front of it and poked it with her index finger. It caught on fire extremely easily, but it didn’t burn out immediately. Harriet figured she’d have at least one minute before the fire would eat through the fabric.

“Hey, what’s that crackling?” she heard Ron ask above her.

“Wingardium leviosa!” 

The burning ball of fabric shot into the air and hit the ceiling with a smoky thud. 

The effect was spectacular. The vines shot back away from the ball like water flowing down a drain, revealing holes in the sides of the chute that they retreated into. Hermione, Ron, and Neville fell to the ground floor in a series of bodily flops and shrieks. Ron landed directly in front of where Harriet was crouched and rolled onto his stomach. Harriet looked at him for a moment, became bored with his groaning, and then glanced upwards to watch her flaming ball of robe drift up towards the dark hiding the trapdoor. It was pretty. Like a comet leaving a trail of embers through space.

Harriet’s attention came back down to earth when Hermione sat up and rubbed at her very puffy hair. “Thank you, Harriet. Timely as usual. Even if it doesn’t feel that way…” Hermione trailed off rubbing at her midsection and upper arms. Ron and Neville slowly got up onto their feet as well, one glaring at Harriet and one with a sort of blank, wide-eyed look about him. 

“Neville?” Harriet asked the wide-eyed boy. He visibly startled and turned to look at her. “What does Devil’s Snare eat?” Neville smiled a bit and his shoulders relaxed.

“Oh! Well, in the wild Devil’s Snare is opportunistic! So it will eat just about any animal that gets stuck, like deer, or large birds, or really anything. Except snakes, snakes pretty much always slip through. Isn’t that fascinating?”

“Are we really talking about this right now?” moaned Ron up towards the returning vines. “We only just got off the menu, you know!”  
*****  
Harriet had never played chess before. She hadn’t really expected it to be an essential human life skill. 

The room ahead of them was a massive chessboard. Everything but the platform Harriet and the humans was stood upon was black or white. It made Harriet a tad nauseated. The cavern was so large and spinning with checker patterns, even the pawns were taller than her. Harriet walked up and poked at one of the nearer very tall pieces.

“Which one’s this?” she turned back to ask.

“Right,” said Ron, “Guess this one’s on me, then.”  
*****  
Harriet stepped through the wall of flames, which took her in and cradled her like sunlight on a summer day. 

Ron, Neville, and now Hermione were behind her. Hermione had bargained successfully, and so Harriet would ensure that the thief did not leave this place with the stone. That didn’t mean she would be happy about it. 

It had been nearly a whole day now since she had earned her payment from Draco. Her flames were low inside, sputtering and cool. It made her feel sluggish, and she was finding it difficult to burn with fury as she wished, but anger was something that her human body seemed well able of carrying even if she, as flame, currently could not. 

And now she was standing beyond the flames and looking across the room to the purple professor, who was standing before the not-mirror Erised. Her least favorite person in the castle. The human that made her flames feel yanked in two directions, one being outwards. 

The Professor had his brownish-purple robes rolled up at the sleeve. The color, as always, perfectly matched the off-puce of his turban. Unlike any previous time she had seen him, his face was cold and piercing. Harriet shivered against some intangible winter wind. Succumbing to a strange human movement made her even angrier and she bared her teeth and began breathing heavily, infusing herself with oxygen to try and heat up inside. It made a hissing noise like Mrs.Norris.

“Ms.Potter. As usual, you appear where you are not supposed to be.”

Harriet snapped her teeth together like she had learned from the door knocker at her dormitory. She locked her eyes onto the Professor’s left pectoral, where unseen his heart beat away, warm and flammable. She wanted to burn through his ribcage and eat it. 

“I go where I want. ‘Supposed to’ implies others have power over me. I’m just as allowed here as you are.”

The man eyed her up and down, taking in her, as far as she could tell, unchanged appearance. Unless you counted the lack of robe. Then, to Harriet’s disgust, he began to laugh.

“Fascinating,” the man said as he turned finally to face her, “It seems the rumors about you are, in fact, accurate. Tell me, Ms.Potter, if you maintain I am permitted access to this place, then why did you come this evening?”

Harriet furrowed her brows and started twirling a braid with her fingers. This human had laughed at her and also he was horrible. “Well,” she hummed, “you can be here, but you can’t take the Philosopher’s Stone. I promised to make sure the stone stays here.”

The Professor took several slow, calm steps towards her and circled her, twiddling his wand. She turned her head to watch him, but as he maintained his distance she was not overly concerned. Then, with a twitch of his wand, she was bound in a slithering rope shot from the air just before the tip of his wand. The rope was rough, woven from thick yellowed fibers. It also felt very flammable.

“Your obtuse nosiness knows no bounds, does it Ms.Potter? Now wait quietly, girl, while I examine this mirror.”

Harriet did not like being told to be quiet, not one bit. Still, she was not in the habit of being contrary just for the sake of it. And this thief, whatever else he may be, was interesting. He’d returned to his place in front of the not-mirror and was tapping it with a gentle fingernail, frowning.

“This mirror is the key to finding the stone…” he murmured, shifting to begin a tactile examination of the gaudy gold frame. “Trust Dumbledore to come up with something like this…but he’s in London…I’ll be far away by the time he gets back…”

“What do you want with the Stone?” Harriet blurted. She wanted to know more about this, to understand everything that was happening.

“You have not figured it out? Tsk tsk, Ms.Potter. This is what happens when you do not show up to class. I serve my Master, the most powerful, the greatest Wizard, Lord Voldemort. He desires the stone above all else.” He ignored her completely then, whining at the mirror like a dog. “I don’t understand…is the stone inside the mirror? Should I break it?” Then Harriet startled against the ropes binding her, felt flames flooding up against her skin just withheld from burning away the ropes binding her. Something wrong was happening, something sick. “Please, my Lord, help me, Master!”

“Use her…use the girl…”

The voice was coming from the back of the Professor’s head, beneath that disgusting, conspicuously thick, and omnipresent turban. 

“Yes,” he whispered, “Girl! Come here.”

The Professor flicked his wand at her and the ropes vanished. She pouted a little. She’d been looking forward to eating those. There was the slightest of urges in the back of her mind telling her to run away, to keep away from this human that made her want to puke, but she ignored it easily. This human was quite literally begging her to burn him alive. She walked forward and stood at his side to look into the not-mirror as he indicated.

Harriet, for the second time, stood in front of the so-named Mirror of Erised. Harriet looked within to the shimmering flames of the old not-mirror. They were horrifying. It was hard to even imagine it as herself. No heat emanated from the mirror, no true light. It was a flame even worse than a filthy human might see it. It made it all the more real, to her, that the flame in the mirror was everything she wanted to be again. She wanted to feel that flame, know it, let it burn through her instead of staring at it with wet, living green eyes.

“Let me see her…”

“Master!” Quirrel yelled into the mirror, “Please, you are not strong enough! Let me-“

“I have the strength for this. Now do it, you fool.”

Quirrel trembled, and with a sigh he raised trembling arms to the wad of cloth he passed off as a hat. The edge, he plucked from where it was tucked beneath the main mass over his forehead. The he circled the cloth around his head once, twice, a dozen times until it fell away completely and her turned to show Harriet the bared back of his bald skull.

The roiling in Harriet’s stomach hit a peak and she pressed one palm over her torso and grimaced into the eyes of the second face grafted onto the back of the Professor’s head. With red eyes and snake-like pupils, a nose flattened into the white skin that passed for cheeks, and a lip-less mouth huffing for breath, he looked like nothing less than he looked human.

“You see what I have been reduced to? A shade of my past self, without form. The stone will restore me to my glorious body, so that I may resume my vision for our world.” Harriet could now see the truth beneath the snake-like face. The thing attached to Quirrel was excessively human. It was free, separated from the grasping inadequacies of humanity, and yet at its core it was petty enough to want to take it all back. It was like Harriet’s opposite. This thing wanted a body so that it could commit human atrocities like arrogant, unyielding greed and cruelty. “Indeed, that old Fool has been scrambling to keep me at bay when I have been in the Castle from the very start of the year. I thought dear old Snape had finally proven my presence to that old fool of a headmaster when I came back to find my classroom door demolished. Yet, somehow, nothing came of it.” 

“Oh, that was me. I didn’t know it was your door when I did it. Your office was weird. I guess you needed a lot of practice at Chess to beat McGonagall.”

“You dare to-!…Little liar, you can’t possibly know such advanced spellwork. You are but a first year. The intricate dark magics needed to unweave wards wrought by myself are inconceivable for a child such as you.” 

“I used an axe, not magic.”

Quirrel’s jaw was hanging slightly open and he was staring Harriet deep in the eye with an increasingly incredulous glare. On the other side of his head, Voldemort was grimacing and swallowing heavily. Harriet wondered how he managed to swallow when he was on the opposite side of the body from the esophagus. And the voice box, for that matter. 

“I did not ward against physical force only because I assumed no self-respecting wizard would stoop to such mugglish means.”

Harriet could feel it in everything she had become. It was time. This was her moment. She clasped her wet, wriggly tongue between her lips and blew as hard as she could.

Quirrel jerked back from the cacophonous fart-noise which heralded the spray of spit from her pursed maw. In the mirror, Harriet could see Voldemort sneering at her with uninhibited disgust.

“I see. You are not self-respecting. I suppose that is one mystery solved. Unfortunately.” Quirrel turned around so that, again, Voldemort was facing her head on. Voldemort used his backwards-arm to gesture her to the mirror with a resigned glower down at her spittle-covered face. “Tell me, Harriet Potter. What do you see?”

Harriet used her sleeve to wipe her face before she answered. She hated wetness. “I see a flame, burning everything.”

For the first time this evening, Voldemort looked pleased. “What a delightful wish to hear from Dumbledore’s pawn. I can give you your desire, Ms.Potter. I can give you the power to burn this world into ash. All you have to do is join me. All you have to do is get me the Philosopher’s Stone.”

Voldemort was so off-track it was almost funny. There were so many things wrong with that offer. Most egregious was thinking she would submit herself to a human. 

“I don’t want that. Also, you have nothin’ I do want and I hate you. Touch me and lose a hand.”

“Impetuous brat! How dare you speak to me so! You do not understand the mistake you have just made.” Voldemort twitched and scowled at her with bared teeth. His eyes narrowed into cold, dangerous slits.

“No, see, I think you’re the one who doesn’t understand.” Harriet pointed one finger right at his left upper back, where that heart was still beating away. “I’m hungry. Very hungry. I’m not joining you. You’re, um, disgusting.” She finally understood why she had accepted Hermione’s plea to come to this corridor, to protect the Philosopher’s Stone against her own desires. The day she saw this human, this wretched thing that murdered the Potters, possess a stone worth 600 years of life and more, would be the day she dove into the ocean and let the waves wash her away.

Harriet looked back into the mirror. There, shimmering at the base of the flame, was a deep red uncut gemstone. As soon as she looked, the flames caught on the stone and the red began to deepen to a crackling black. Harriet jumped back from the mirror clutching her mouth. Something big was on her tongue! Something flammable. She swallowed it instinctively.

Inside her, the cold, hard lump settled in her flames and burst into magma. She could feel it oozing down her insides into super-heated plasma. She’d never felt so hot in her entire life, human shaped or otherwise. Absently, she noted that her hair ties had fallen to the floor as bits of ash, and all of her hair was lighting up with embers beneath the exterior charcoal black. The heat made her bangs rise slightly from her forehead and her shirt began to smolder beneath her flickering, unknotted mane. 

“No!” screamed Voldemort, “What have you done? Quirrel! Get it out of her. In any way you can.”

Quirrel lunged at her just as the fire erupted from beneath her skin. She could feel it, bubbling over into a shimmer of true heat like her body was a sword being forged. The Professor grabbed her by the arm and shrieked, jerking backwards. Harriet did not let him get away so easily. She wanted this nauseating parasite gone. People who stick their hands in fire get burned. No exceptions.

Harriet grabbed onto Quirrel around the waist and unerringly found his chest covered by musty purple robes. As soon as she could sense his heartbeat she bit down, not with pressure, but with a mouth now spewing flame. Quirrel caught instantly. 

The Professor whipped back and forth, yanking at her shirt and screaming, but Harriet just held on and kept biting. Every chunk of flesh chewed up by her flames only helped her burn hotter, and soon she had the energy to jump up and grab onto his face, and the back of his head, and the horrible protrusion that was the man who murdered the Potters. She ate at him with everything from her fingertips to her braids until he collapsed beneath her weight, charred away at every edge. Harriet sat up and looked down to see that she’d done as promised. The Professor’s ribcage was blackened and bare, and the organs beneath were little more than ash. 

She felt much better.

Then, something like smoke yet nothing like smoke flew at her, through her, and her flames sputtered and jerked as she blacked out entirely.


	19. The Camera

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harriet makes a friend laugh, before she makes him cry.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is so much shorter than normal, but I have a paper due in 24 hours so whatever. 
> 
> Next chapter will be a fun little Draco interlude and it'll be much longer.

Harriet took a moment to remember how to open her eyes. Everything felt warm and soft inside of her, crackling and bright. There was no point in opening her eyes when she was so full and comfy.

“Good morning, Harriet. It’s time to wake up, dear girl.”

Harriet scrunched up her face. That sounded like Albus. To be sure it was him, she’d have to open her eyes and check. She twisted around a little and squeaked one eye open to peer towards the voice sound. He was blurry, but he was definitely Albus, smiling and seated next to the bed she was sleeping in.

“I am glad to see you back with us, Harriet. You had us all very worried.”

“Us?”

Albus chuckled. “Myself, of course, and your friends Ms.Granger, Mr.Weasley, and Mr.Longbottom. I was also pleasantly surprised by Mr.Draco Malfoy and his friends Mr.Crabbe and Mr.Goyle coming to ascertain your condition.” Harriet was bemused. Had they just come to stand near her while she slept? She didn’t think she radiated enough heat in this form to make that pleasant for them. Harriet looked away from Albus to try and figure out just where she was.

This was not a room in the castle she was familiar with, which narrowed things down considerably. It was full of beds with curtains and windows like in her dormitory, but the room was rectangular instead of round. All of the fabrics were white and fluttery in the sunlight coming through the very high windows. The ceiling on this room could rival the main entry hall for height. She wondered if this was what the churches she’d read about looked like.

“What is this place? How did I get here?” she asked, turning back to Albus. He sighed and settled back into his seat, stroking his beard. 

“This is the Hogwarts Infirmary, where sick or injured students are cared for until they feel better. Your friends who accompanied you came to find me, and I arrived in time to locate you next to the Mirror of Erised. You were passed out upon the body of Professor Quirrel, who it has come to my attention was actually harboring Lord Voldemort. Likely since his trip to Albania. Perhaps, Harriet, you can explain more about what happened. For instance, I have been unable to find the Philosopher’s Stone, which I am told you and Ms.Granger realized was the object of Voldemort’s desire." Albus sighed and slumped slightly in his seat, looking up to the windows far above. "I fear he may have found a way to take it with him as he made his escape.”

Harriet shook her head. “No,” she said.

Albus raised his eyebrows and sat up a tad straighter, turning back to her. “No? Then where is it? Did you hide it, somehow?” Harriet shook her head again, then grabbed her hair, unbraided which unnerved her, and yanked on it lightly. “It is alright, Harriet,” Albus said to her with a frown, “I already resigned myself to the worst-case scenario. Anything you tell me cannot disappoint me.” Harriet sighed and let go of her hair.

“I swallowed it.” For a moment she and Albus just stared at each other. “It was an accident!” she blurted into his face. Albus sat back in his chair and stared at some meaningless spot over Harriet’s head for a moment. Then, he twitched. His mustache quivered. And suddenly, he began to laugh. Albus guffawed, clutching his stomach and shaking her whole bed as the strange bout of gaiety rocked through him from head to toe. Harriet could only watch, incredulous, until he calmed into little giggles and wiped a few tears from the corners of his sparkling blue eyes. 

“Harriet,” he said in a hoarser than usual voice, “my darling girl. I owe you my thanks. I doubt there is any other who could have so thoroughly thwarted Voldemort’s plans. Your wit is an inspiration to a foolish old man such as myself.” He sighed deeply and beamed at her. “Thank you, Harriet, for however accidental your actions, they surely prevented Voldemort from returning to his human form. You’ve done our entire world a great service.”

Harriet could feel her eyes bugging out of her head. Albus was, undoubtedly, the strangest human she had ever met. 

She and Albus sat in comfortable silence for several minutes. Occasionally, Albus giggled again. Other times he would shake his head and sigh, ever smiling. Harriet quickly grew hungry in her boredom. 

“What is Voldemort?" she asked idly. "Why isn’t he human-shaped anymore?”

“Hmm,” Albus said, stroking his beard once more beneath a fading smile. “Well, it is my belief that on that fateful night when he came to your home, something went wrong, for Voldemort, something he did not plan for. He succeeded in killing your parents, but when he turned his wand on you, the spell was, somehow, turned back on him. I believe that rather than killing him, the rebounded curse destroyed his body, turning him into more of a shade than a man. A state which has allowed Voldemort to linger. I am truly sorry, dear girl, but I do not believe either of us has seen the end of Lord Voldemort.”

Harriet clenched her teeth and looked away from Albus. There were two types of sorry. One was for when things were your fault, and one was for when you just genuinely felt bad for someone else. She’d never experienced either. She couldn’t say which meaning Albus intended. Neither one made her burn steadier. 

“On a happier note, your friend Ms.Granger commissioned a gift for you while you rested. I understand that Hagrid put together this photo album. Go on and take a look.” Albus reached behind him and picked up a very large black-leather bound book, with oddly lumpy pages. He placed it gently onto her lap and then sat back and watched her with a steady smile.

Harriet carefully peeled back the blank leather cover and looked down at the first page. There were no words, only pictures. The pictures themselves were moving, or rather, the people inside the pictures were. They waved out at her, danced and smiled. 

One was a young woman with dark red hair and green eyes over a beaming grin. The other was a young man with black, messy hair a lot like Harriet’s, glasses, and a sort of happy, sly smile that only smoothed out when he looked over at the red-haired woman. He had his arms around her in both the photos on the page.

“Albus, who are these people?” asked Harriet. Albus’s smile faded slightly, but stubbornly clung onto his deeply-lined face.

“Those are your parents, Harriet.”

Harriet jerked her gaze back to the photo album. She drifted her pointer finger over the page and settled it onto the woman. She had green eyes like Harriet.

“Lily Potter?”

“Yes. A marvelous woman, indeed. She was a student of mine, here, a Gryffindor along with the young boy who grew to one day become her husband.”

Albus kept his eyes on Harriet’s face until she looked away. She drifted her finger to the side until it settled on the man. The man with her hair, her skin, her glasses, her face. She looked back up at Albus and his smile was even smaller, a ghost of his beginning grin.

“James Potter?”

“Yes. Your father.”

Harriet kept her eyes firmly on the book of photos. She turned the page.

Lily Potter was wearing a white dress that trailed over the floor, standing next to James Potter beneath an arch of white flowers. Harriet recognized calla lilies, and roses, and carnations. And lilies. Lots of lilies, with only one bright red one tucked over James Potter’s heart. There were other people around them, smiling at the two and cheering, but Lily and James Potter had their arms around each other and tears in their eyes. They were smiling and crying all at once. Perhaps, they were happy and sad at the same time?

In the photo below a boy around her age in a red and gold tie was standing with three other boys laughing and making faces at the camera. He was about Harriet’s age, maybe. Give or take ten years. He had the glasses, and the hair, and Harriet recognized in the boy the face of the man he would grow into. James Potter. 

Page after page, snippets of the lives of Lily and James were captured on thick shining paper. The Potters were smiling in every last photo, facing out at Harriet from their frames. When they smiled at the other people in the frames, it looked happy and fearless. When they smiled out at Harriet it looked staged and vacuous. 

Then, in one last photo, the Potters were holding onto a baby. It was tiny, with closed eyes and a light layer of dark hair. Lily had the baby clutched to her chest, while James was rubbing one big palm over the baby’s blanket-covered stomach. Compared to these smiles, every one before had been weak. Lily and James were so focused on the baby that they didn’t even look up at the camera, at Harriet. 

That thing, that tiny bundle, it couldn’t be anything other than Harriet’s body. 

Harriet turned her head and eyed the glass of water on the bedside table. It wouldn’t put her out, not so little. She looked back to Albus.

“What did they want?” she asked, desperate for an answer and, as always, unable to even begin to guess why it mattered to her. This moment was new. The depths of it, rich in their newness, still made her think fearfully of drowning. “More than anything else, what would have made them happy?”

Albus looked more than sad. He looked old. “They loved you, Harriet,” he said. “They wanted to see you live a long and happy life, free of Voldemort’s cruelty.”

Harriet looked at the picture one more time before she gently closed the photo album and put it on her bedside table. She would not open it again. She’d already consumed the contents.


	20. Draco Interlude

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Draco shows why he's in Slytherin.

It was night, and Harriet was one of only two people in the infirmary. The other was Brans himself, sleeping in a bed on the other side of the room, obscured by draped white curtains. It was the perfect time to approach her alone. Dumbledore had been hovering over her all damned day. 

Draco crept through the infirmary slowly, keeping out of the window light and ensuring his shadow did not touch any of the curtained beds. He half wanted to be discovered, though, if only so he would not be able to speak with her. Harriet was, without any doubt, the scariest person he’d ever met. He’d been friends with the scariest person ever for an entire year. Either he was a genius or…yeah, he was definitely a genius! Only, he’d kind of been avoiding her. Just for a few days, just because he was terribly busy. Obviously, he wasn’t so scared of her as to avoid her. 

Draco ran a hand through his undone hair. He really couldn’t lie to himself that well. He was pretty sure that she was going to burn his face off. Yet, here he was. Sneaking into the Infirmary with a bunch of pastries, hoping to pacify the sleeping dragon while it was still weakened. By feeding it. Honestly, he was supposed to be the dragon in any scenario, but Harriet had mastered fire, so he was forced to concede she had an edge on him. 

Draco snuck through the seam in the curtains around her sickbed, careful to avoid making a sound. Harriet was sleeping, curled up into a little ball near her pillow. She looked just as she always looked, rough and uncultured, a hooligan on the same level as Crabbe and Goyle. The only difference in her appearance was that, in her sleep, her hair was unbound. He’d never seen it unbraided before and it looked strange. It was wild, certainly Potterish, and dark, but it looked almost matte black, lacking a certain greasy shine Draco associated with hair. It was like he could reach out and touch her hair only to have it crumble between his fingers. Then she shifted and her hair moved with her, shattering the illusion. Or rather, what Draco would have thought of as an illusion a few days ago.

He didn’t think anyone else had noticed. They couldn’t have, not with how dark that dungeon was. He’d seen, though. The fire that burned off Brans’s skin did not come from Harriet’s wand. It appeared under her roaming hand like she was revealing a conjured illusion. He wouldn’t have believed his own eyes but for her reaction. Brans’s screams were echoing in his nightmares every night, every moment one of his housemates congratulated him on a duel well-done. Harriet, though, she hadn’t so much as flinched. 

Draco only had to take one step towards Harriet, a single clicking heel-step on the floor, to awaken her. She bolted upright with wide open eyes, her hair fluffing out into the air around her. Draco flinched back and yelped, near to losing the pastries in his arms. 

“Damn it, Potter!” he whispered, “don’t startle me like that, you’ll get me caught! And then you won’t get any of the pastries I brought you.” He brandished them ahead of himself, biting down hard on his tongue and trying not to let the plate shake. Harriet relaxed, slumping down into her much-too-large bed, and Draco relaxed with her. She was wearing infirmary pajamas that crumpled around her tiny form like a handkerchief wrapped around a twig. The striped cotton made her look harmless.

“Draco!” she chirped, “Hello. How are you? I want those, um, now.” She reached out both arms for the plate and he quickly handed it over, avoiding touching her skin. Fear or not, he knew she hated to be touched. True to form, she shoved an entire frosted roll into her mouth, cheeks bulging slightly for mere seconds as she swallowed it down like a snake. Draco frowned and sat down on the edge of her bed. He wasn’t sure why, but it startled him to see her acting so normally around him. Harriet stared at him over her depleting cache of sweets, observing him with a slight smile pursed over her chomping teeth and relaxed interest in her unwavering eyes. 

“I hear you went into the third-floor corridor and nearly got yourself killed, along with some idiotic mudblood and her Gryffindors.” Harriet smiled a little wider and put down her halved-bagel. Draco leaned forward. 

“Mmm. I was curious. You know, the Philosophers Stone was down there. Voldemort wanted it so that he could grow himself a human body or, hmm, live for hundreds of years like the Flamels. So, he attacked me and I burned him a lot. But he got away. What do you know about Voldemort, Draco?” Draco flinched, twice, at hearing this horrific creature utter that forbidden name. Harriet resumed her eating, then, staring at him with that cheerful, benevolent interest like she hadn’t even noticed his discomfort. Or didn’t care. Draco, unable to handle her question and the smell of excessive sugar, leaned back. 

“Um,” he stalled, because she’d burned the Dark Lord, she’d thwarted his plans and burned the Dark Lord she’d burned him… “the Dark Lord, he…that is, it’s terribly irresponsible of Professor Dumbledore to have…you really hurt him?” Draco whined. Harriet nodded quickly, causing her hair to shake out over her shoulders. Draco would have sworn, in that moment, that he saw sparks. He took a deep breath and closed his eyes, then he slowly leaned in a hairsbreadth away from her ear, from that coal-black hair. No one else could ever hear this. No other wizard or witch could ever know he said this. Harriet, though, well she didn’t count, not anymore. “The Dark Lord wanted to cleanse our world, remove the muggle filth which does not deserve to sully our halls. His ideals are…very in-line with my family’s ideals. My Father says the Dark Lord was the most powerful wizard to have ever lived. You, we were told, killed him, as a baby some ten years ago. But my Father always said he’d come back.” Draco took a heaving breath, stuttering on the exhale. The cheek nearest to Harriet felt very warm. ‘It’s just body heat,’ he told himself, ‘nothing more…nothing more…’

Harriet’s head turned and Draco flinched. 

“What made him so powerful? What did he give up?” she whispered into his ear, quiet as smoke.

“He…I…my Father…the Dark Lord did not give up anything. He was a leader, of the Death Eaters, wizards unafraid to die for his cause. He defeated anyone who got in his way, got mudbloods to crawl back into the filth where they belong, forced the creatures of the world to obey us as they…” Draco gulped deeply and froze. He trembled with every puff of Harriet’s breath against his ear.

“Liar.” Draco flinched back, trying to scramble to his feet only for Harriet to grab his arm, freezing him in place as Brans’s screams rattled through his skull. “You always give up something to gain power like that. You just don’t know what he sacrificed, Draco. It’s just like you, you got power from me and now you owe me something in return.” Draco didn’t dare to attempt to run, even as he bit his lip and breathed in tiny gasps like an animal his Father had just beat with his cane. 

“Of-of course, Harriet. A Malfoy always keeps his word. How about, um, a nice, er, book? Or maybe a cake! A nice three-tier chocolate cake all for you! Or do you just want gold? I have gold, all the gold you could want.” Harriet shook her head and Draco nearly fell to his knees.

“I want one of your teeth.”

Draco stopped breathing. Harriet gently tugged on his arm and Draco, thoughtlessly, moved forward towards her. This wasn’t really happening. It was a nightmare, a result of all of his stress from that duel in the dungeons with the flame and that sticky glob of burned skin… Then Harriet’s hand darted up, to his mouth, so hot he had to flinch away, a flinch that just barely parted his lips, and then those fingers were in his mouth scraping along his cheek grabbing one of his teeth!

And then it was gone. At the back of his mouth on the upper left, a hole of flesh throbbed and burned, pulsating momentarily only for the pain to fade away into an unignorably hot absence. It shouldn’t have stopped hurting so soon. It should still be bleeding, unless it was cauterized. 

Ah.

Draco dumbly sat back down on the bed, watching as Harriet held the nearly bloodless tooth between her thumb and pointer finger. She held it up to her eye, rotating it around with a deft little twist, and then, seemingly satisfied, she popped it into her own mouth and swallowed. Draco closed his eyes and let his shakes fade away, only opening them again once he heard a pleased little hum. Harriet was licking her lips. Her eyes looked brighter as she reached down and, with no change whatsoever in demeanor, went back to finishing off pastry after pastry.

“So this is how you defeated the dark lord,” said Draco, voice echoing oddly in his own ears. “Tell me, is it that the bigger the sacrifice, the more you can do?” Harriet nodded, not even pausing to swallow. Draco nodded once in return. “When your parents died for you…I understand now. And, if I request another deal somewhere along the line?”

Harriet gulped deeply and shrugged. “My price will be fair. If it’s more than a little favor then I’ll need payment before hand, to have the magic to make your request happen. But I’m always happy to take up such a delightful offer as a sacrifice for power. Especially for you. I like you.”

Draco stared at her for a moment, and then found himself chuckling. His eyes were wet, and his tongue kept seeking out that empty space in his jaw, but he was laughing. And he did not feel so scared of Harriet anymore. There was no need to be scared, even if there was reason to be. He knew the sharpness of her flame, now. Which meant he could use it. 

“I don’t know what you are, and I don’t care. I won’t tell anyone and in return, when I need something, I’ll come to you and expect you to make me a fair deal. No matter what I’m asking for. Deal?”

“Yes, that’s the deal. I’m glad you understand, this time.” Draco laughed one last bit and wiped his eyes on his sleeve. It was behavior completely unbecoming of a Malfoy. Everything about his friendship with Harriet was unbecoming. Yet, the promise she made was unlike anything he’d ever known before. It felt more trustworthy than any other relationship he’d ever had. The conditions were just so simple.

Draco looked up to meet Harriet’s eyes and smiled. She smiled back, an eyebrow raised inquisitively. “You’re a surprisingly good friend to have, Harriet. I um…I suppose I’d best thank you. My reputation in Slytherin has skyrocketed since the duel.” 

“Anytime, Draco. Your tooth was delicious, you know. And flattery gets you everywhere.”


	21. The Mystical Slayer of Evil

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harriet catches a train.
> 
> Also, every little girl wants a pony.

Harriet, by some miracle, had successfully outmaneuvered the Dursleys enough to end up here, at Platform 9 ¾, with her second year school supplies, in time to catch the Hogwarts express. She’d run through the barrier and hoisted herself and her trunk up onto the train with less than a minute to spare, but she’d done it, and now the Dursleys couldn’t touch her for another nine months. More, if she managed to escape into the wilderness next summer. 

Harriet stared around her at the stuffed-full compartments and sighed. She’d sooner sit in the corridor than join one of those packed glass boxes of oxygen-wasters. So, she was very pleased when she heard her name and turned around to see Hermione.

“Harriet!” Hermione called, marching down the aisle with a threatening countenance offset by a giddy grin. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you!” Harriet just barely felt herself begin to smile back when Hermione threw herself forward and wrapped her arms tight around Harriet’s shoulders.

The embrace lasted only for a moment. In that moment, a tuft of Hermione’s hair ended up in Harriet’s mouth. As Hermione pulled back, Harriet eyed the spot and hoped that a few singed hairs would go unnoticed in the cloud of Hermione’s mane.

“Oh, summer was so boring, Harriet, you’ve no idea. The library back home has nothing on Hogwarts, and Mum had to drive me every time I wanted to go. Ugh.” Hermione shuddered and rolled her eyes. “It will be so nice to be back in the castle, where I can read as much as I’d like. Although,” she flushed slightly, “it will also be nice, to spend time with you and Ron. I wouldn’t have been so bored back home, I think, even without books, if you both had been around. Your letters were certainly,” Hermione paused and squinted down at Harriet, "...interesting."

“Yes,” said Harriet, nodding. She understood completely. The Dursleys had felt twice as cold, thrice as boring, having Hogwarts for comparison.

Hermione grinned. “I knew you’d get it, at least. Ron’s got so many siblings, he claims to have missed us but I really can’t see how that’s possible. Oh!” she perked up, only emphasizing the many inches of height she had on Harriet. “He brought his sister, actually. She’s a first year, you’ll meet her in a moment.”

“Outta the way, for Merlin’s sake,” came the unwelcome call from some taller student trying to shuffle past them.

“You could say please, you know!” Hermione snapped back, only to then return her focus to Harriet and grimace apologetically. “Let’s get out of the corridor, anyways, Harriet. Ron and the others will be waiting.”

Harriet mentally shrugged, figuring that going along with Hermione could only be to her benefit, and so when Hermione stepped back and led her down the train, she followed along even as the train began to move. Ahead of her, Hermione stumbled slightly. Harriet, as the train accelerated with a jolt, flat-out fell forward to one knee. She stood back up and hurried after Hermione, but not before glancing to the side into the compartment she had tripped in front of. Inside, a group of taller, nearly adult students in green ties were chatting, all but for one very large dark-haired boy, who was watching her stand with an odd glint in his eye. Harriet met his eye as she left. In her wake, the last she saw of him was his expression turning to one of absolute fear and pain as he slapped a hand to his forehead. She ignored it, humans and their pains were so common and inexplicable. It made her glad she didn't have to deal with such things. Pain looked unpleasant.

Hermione led Harriet to a comparatively less crowded compartment, with only three others already inside. Two were Ron and Neville, and third was a small girl sitting by Ron, likely only a bit taller than Harriet, with long red hair the same shade as Ron’s. 

“Harriet, this is Ron’s little sister Ginny. Ginny, this is Harriet Potter.” Hermione gestured broadly towards the girl sitting by Ron. The girl’s skin turned a very dark red and she squeaked once, only to fall silent and stare at Harriet with wide, blank eyes. Harriet stared back. Whatever this girl expected from her in terms of human introductory rituals, Harriet hadn’t the slightest idea. So, Harriet did not protest when, behind her, Hermione whispered “oh, for Merlin’s sake!” and shoved her towards an empty seat. 

Harriet fell into the seat by the window and watched Hermione float her trunk up onto the storage shelf. Next to her Neville was taking up the seat closest to the door, as far away from Harriet as possible on the plush red bench. Harriet was pleased. Hermione sat down next to the girl, Ginny, and so Harriet’s space was further preserved. 

“S-so,” said Neville, “how was your summer, H-Harriet?” Harriet cricked her neck around to look at Neville. He was twiddling his fingers and smiling at her. 

Harriet smiled back. “Unpleasant,” she answered. Then she turned back to Ginny, who was still watching her, and stopped smiling. To her left, Neville made a weird gurgle noise. Ginny’s red skin changed colors a bit more. 

“Harriet.” said Hermione. Harriet turned to Hermione and hummed. “Ugh," Hermione muttered. "Honestly, sometimes I wonder if you even read the manners book I got you.“ Hermione stopped and bit her lower lip before closing her eyes and taking a deep breath. When she opened her eyes she grit her teeth and looked back to Harriet. “Look, Neville wasn't asking you for, for, for some honest answer.” Hermione pinched the bridge of her nose and so Harriet nodded to hurry her along. Out of the corner of her eye, Harriet noted Neville scooting away. “You can tell me about how your summer actually was later. Just tell Neville it was fine and ask how his was.”

Harriet turned to Neville. “My summer was fine. How was yours.” She turned back to Hermione, who gave her a half shrug. Harriet nodded and grinned out at all of the occupants of the compartment at once, making sure to smile as widely as possible. Neville hunched over in his seat.

Hermione sighed deeply and returned to pinching the bridge of her nose. “Good job, Harriet.” To her right, Ginny finally exhibited signs of language. 

“Wow…” whispered Ginny. She was staring at Harriet again. To the right of Ginny, Ron scoffed. 

“Calm down, Ginny, I’ve told you, she’s not like she is in your books, alrigh’?” He turned to his sister as he spoke and rolled his eyes. Ginny scowled and glared up at him.

“Shut up, Ron!” she whispered in a very carrying voice. “You’re embarrassing me in front of the Girl-who-Lived!”

“You’re embarrassing yourself!” he said loudly. Harriet watched in interest as Ginny's skin flushed near purple. Ron ignored Ginny and gestured a hand towards Harriet without looking in either of their directions. “She’s rude, she’s brave, she’s smart as hell, and she studies more than Hermione. Yet, Hermione had to teach her how to wash her face. She’s completely daft! Look, watch this, you can call her thick and she’s too thick to even care.” Ron turned to Harriet and cleared his throat. “You’re a right daft bint, Harriet.” Then, without waiting a moment, he turned back to Ginny and said “See? So quit being so weird. It's rude. She doesn’t need worshipers, she needs female friends that can teach her how to act like a human being instead of a mystical slayer of evil or whatever. Sorry, Harriet.” He quickly turned to her as he finished and kind of grimaced at her.

Harriet stared blankly at Ron for a moment. He’d called her stupid, she was sure of that, but he’d also called her smart. “You’re thick,” she said to Ron, and then she smiled at him in genuine amusement. Instead of yelling, or anything like it, Ron smiled back. Harriet supposed that language wasn’t so important as long as you could get your point across. Hermione scoffed at the both of them, and Ginny rucked up her shoulders around her ears and went back to staring at her, but she and Ron both relaxed a bit and Harriet was glad.

“Anyways, Harriet, my summer was pretty brill. Mum, Da, and us all went to Diagon Alley to get Ginny her wand and stuff you know, and you won’t believe what happened!” Ron took a breath and leaned forward, and Neville did the same, looking very curious. Hermione just looked exasperated. “We met Malfoy’s Dad when we were buying our textbooks! He’s a right git, and he looks just like our Malfoy but with long hair and a stupid cane. You do know about Malfoy, right?”

Harriet scrunched her nose and tried to remember if she knew anyone called Malfoy. It didn’t sound even remotely familiar. “Nope!” she said and shook her head. Ron grinned.

“Lucky for you! He’s such a ponce, always making fun of me and Hermione. You best watch out for him at school, Ginny. Anyways, his Dad made a huge fuss and all at the bookstore, and so Da, my Da, he hit him! Right in the face, like ‘Pow’, and then Malfoy’s Dad, get this, he tried to fight my Da like a muggle. Da thrashed him of course,” Ron puffed out his chest, “at least, until Mum broke them up, but it was still great to watch.”

Harriet laughed. “Tell me another! Tell me more!” she called across the aisle. Hermione huffed and pulled out a book, but Ron grinned and slouched back.

“Well…” he started…

Hours later, the train finally arrived at Hogwarts and Harriet followed Hermione and Ron and Neville and Ginny out into the crowd of students. Rather than going to the lake, they and all of the non-first-year students flowed like salmon up a stream towards a large group of carriages that were slowly filling up. As one was filled, the black animals pulling them would begin to trot and the carriages would begin up the hill towards the distant castle. 

As Harriet approached, she got a closer look at the black creatures at each carriage and walked curiously over to one. It looked like pictures she’d seen in veterinary texts about horse skeletons, except it also had wings like a bat sprouting from each scapula, each one at least as big as Harriet, and big bulging white eyes. There was a layer of black skin stretched over the horse skeleton that gave the creature an emaciated look. Harriet doubted a creature like this would last her for more than a minute, with so little on its bones to burn. 

The horse-thing Harriet was staring at curved its skinny, vertebral neck towards Harriet and sniffed her with huge, gaping nostrils so lacking in cartilage that they looked more like a single orifice. Harriet breathed outwards, releasing a puff of smoke, and then smiled as the horse-thing screamed nervously and reared backwards. Behind Harriet, the humans started screaming too. Harriet turned away and crawled into the carriage, which shut closed behind her and began to move up the hill. 

“What was that?” Hermione asked her shrilly. Ron nodded next to her, and Neville simply shook in his seat looking very pale. Harriet shrugged.

“Wasn’t me,” she said. Then she grinned. This was going to be a fun school year.


	22. The Limelight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harriet discovers traditional femininity, masculinity, and is rescued from both by a friend.
> 
> Draco never was on good terms with gender-roles.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I backtracked, because I realized that I needed to introduce Lockhart but if I did it then, the timeline would be all messed up. And that's just confusing. Hopefully, I won't do this again.

One thing to be said for burning Quirrel alive, Harriet got a whole new defense against the dark arts professor this year. And, he didn’t make her want to puke at all. She was finally going to be able to attend DADA. 

Standing in the hallway outside the classroom, Harriet stared curiously at her dormmates as they clumped together against the far wall. Mandy had brought a small hand-mirror today that all of the girls were using at once in a tight huddle of faces. Faucet had a sticky liquid she was smearing over her lips, and Lisa was brushing her bangs into an ever tighter curl. Harriet turned slowly to her immediate right. 

“Draco?” she asked, “why are my dormmates doing…that?” 

Draco, Crabbe, and Goyle (whose names she had learned to spell from various letters Draco had sent) were standing with her against the far wall from the DADA door. All of the green ties were standing alongside them, but on the other side of Draco from Harriet. There were, to be frank, a lot more green-ties than blue-ties. Harriet had forgotten to wear her tie at all. 

Pansy snorted. “Wow, Potter, are you sure you’re a girl?”

“At least she doesn’t act like you,” Draco drawled as he crossed his arms. Next to him, Crabbe and Goyle snickered. Pansy flushed a deep, angry red and glared daggers not at Draco, but at Harriet. Specifically, at Harriet’s elbow which was brushing against Draco’s own. Harriet looked away from Pansy up to the side of Draco’s face. He was glancing at her from the corner of his eye, looking slightly nervous. Harriet smiled briefly and Draco’s shoulders untensed. 

“Harriet,” said Goyle from around Draco, “what do you think of Professor Lockhart?” 

Harriet frowned. “Who?” 

Sighing, Draco planted a palm against his forehead as Pansy and several other nearby students laughed. Presumably at her. 

“The defense professor, Harriet,” Draco mumbled through his palm. Goyle chuckled and nodded, but he shot Harriet a smile as well, so she let it go. 

“Hmm,” she said, “well, he wears a lot of fabrics which is nice. The books for this class were slightly boring, but it might just be that I don’t like fiction books a whole lot.”

“Fiction?!” came a screech from across the hall, “How stupid can you get? Professor Lockhart is a hero!” Harriet looked around and saw Padma marching forward, Li at her back. Pansy, too, had somehow ended up moving near to them as she entered Harriet’s line of sight.

“Yeah, Potter, how oblivious can you get? We’re lucky to get a professor like Lockhart,” said Pansy with a decisive nod. Padma eyed her curiously. 

“You have good taste, Parkinson,” said Padma with a single delicately arched eyebrow. 

“Well, you’re smart to recognize it, Patil,” Pansy replied, sweeping her dark bob back behind one ear. The two girls looked each other up and down in silence. They did not smile, but they did nod to each other after along, assessing moment. 

“It’s not hard to be smarter than Potter,” Padma finally replied. Pansy grinned sharp and easy. 

“Well, intelligent company is valuable in Slytherin just as in Ravenclaw. Feel free to sit with me in the library if you’d ever like to study.” Padma smiled oddly, with a sort of frown around her eyes, and nodded once more before turning and walking back to the rest of Harriet’s dormmates. The other four girls were all gaping at Padma like she’d just frozen solid in front of them. 

“Well, that was unexpected.” Harriet looked up and saw Draco was eyeing Padma with a tiny frown. When he noticed Harriet looking, he reached over and patted her shoulder. “Don’t worry, I’ll keep the situation under control.”

“I don’t worry,” Harriet answered blankly. Draco’s face went slack and then tightened again around his eyes. 

“Right,” he said shortly. He was chewing on his lip, looking at her, when the DADA door slammed open inwards to reveal the very blonde, very heavily-dressed, and very smiley man from the welcoming feast. 

“Welcome, welcome dear students! Enter, if you will, my humble domain!” The professor, Lockhart, waved his magenta-clad arms wide apart and stepped aside out of the way of the entrance. Every girl besides Harriet giggled or twitched somehow. 

Harriet shuffled into the room alongside Draco and sat next to him in one of the two-person desks near the back, with Crabbe and Goyle at the desk behind them. Their positioning was perfect for Harriet to feed them answers if they needed academic aid. 

“Let me introduce you to your new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher.... me!” 

Harriet ignored the loud, boring man. Behind Lockhart two men were standing behind a massive camera rig. By massive, Harriet meant ‘bigger than her’. The camera was pointed towards a cleared spot between Lockhart’s desk and the student desks, and Harriet had a very bad feeling that the two men fiddling with it were looking at her. 

“Wow,” sighed some blonde Harriet vaguely remembered as “Daffy”. 

“Wow, indeed!” cooed Lockhart. The lukewarm man fluffed his hair and walked down the aisle towards them. As he walked, he placed two papers on each desk, one for each student. When he reached Daffy, he winked. The girl sort of swayed over to one side and started giggling into her deskmate’s shoulder. Harriet grimaced. Then, when Lockhart reached Harriet, he looked down at her and bared all of his teeth. All of them. “Harry Potter! May I call you Harry? Now, I hope you’ll do your best, sweetheart, and not get too distracted!”

Harriet looked up at Lockhart blankly, the way she would stare at a clock that was an hour off. Then, she too bared all of her teeth. Not in a friendly way. 

“My name is Harriet. Harry is a name for sweaty, flatulent flesh-bags.” Lockhart’s lips scrunched inwards up over his terribly white teeth like a drawstring bag being cinched shut. He recovered quickly, but not before she heard Draco sigh from behind her. 

“Well, Harriet it is then!” Lockhart hurried through passing out the last few papers and then bustled back to the front of the classroom. “Now, dear class, I’m sure you all know the basics of how I earned my notoriety. Order of Merlin, Third Class. Five time winner of Witch Weekly’s Most Charming Smile Award.” Lockhart bared all of his teeth again and the class, as one amorphous auditory blob, made an appreciative sort of noise. “And author of my best-selling autobiography, Magical Me! Which all of you should have a copy of.” Lockhart waved about his pointer finger towards the students in the front row. Harriet felt explicably hungrier than usual. “But, just to see who here needs to catch up on their reading, we’re going to start with a little quiz. Please, turn over your papers and begin, the highest scorer will receive my personalized autograph!”

Harriet looked over to Draco at her side and grimaced. He frowned back at her and shrugged before turning to his own paper. So, she flipped over her own and resolved to get started. 

“What is Gilderoy Lockhart’s favorite color?”

Harriet bit down hard on her tongue. Upon a cursory read, the entire paper was thus formatted. Every question was about Lockhart’s subjective preferences or personal history. Harriet was more than bewildered. What could Lockhart’s personal life have to do with defending against dark arts? The value of this information was roughly equivalent to that time Harriet ate Petunia’s pocket change. That is to say, it was useless and tedious to burn. 

The paper on the other hand, the paper was just fine. Harriet stuck one corner into her mouth and began chewing downward, burning away the paper between her sharp teeth as she went. Next to her, she thought she heard a hissing noise from Draco, so she turned to look at him. He was looking at her with a gaping jaw that he quickly snapped shut when she made eye contact, still chewing away. From the corner of her eye she saw that Crabbe and Goyle were watching her, too. She turned all the way around in her chair to face them as she swallowed down the last few inches of paper. Crabbe and Goyle were holding their papers a little bit crunched up in front of their faces. After a moment, the two looked at each other and grunted. Then, Crabbe balled up his paper and shoved it into his mouth. Goyle did the same, and they began to chew. Harriet was impressed, as Hermione had led her to believe that humans were unable to eat paper, but here these two were managing wonderfully! She really did believe, down to the coals, that Crabbe and Goyle were far superior to almost every other human in this castle. 

Harriet swung back around to face forward in her desk and noticed that Lockhart and the two camera men were gawking at her. Lockhart actually looked a bit sweaty around the collar now, if Harriet wasn’t misinterpreting things. Draco, meanwhile, was face-down on his desk with his arms over his head. He was likely taking a nap, then. Harriet hadn’t realized he was so tired. 

Harriet decided to join Draco in napping, and so the next ten or so minutes passed calmly, with Harriet idly flickering through the ashes of her breakfast, now burned down to embers. She was undecided, now, on whether she’d bother to attend DADA this year, but figured she’d talk to Hermione about it first. Hermione always knew what would or wouldn’t attract attention to Harriet. Attention was the last thing she needed, honestly, she already had so many humans in her routine as it was. 

“Pencils down, everyone!” called Lockhart. He sounded a bit shriller than before. Harriet winced and sat up, cracking a jaw-breaking yawn as she did so. When she reopened her eyes, she huffed to see Lockhart was staring at her again. This time, with some honest anger. If he’d had a mustache like Vernon, Harriet bet it would be trembling. But, when he turned back to the camera-men, his smile was firmly back in place and he clapped his hands like everything was wonderful. “Alright, wonderful, wonderful, would you, dear,” he gestured to a student in the front row, “be so kind as to to collect your classmate’s papers for me? Thank you so much.” Mandy shot up and hurriedly began grabbing papers, only hesitating slightly when Harriet’s section yielded only one result out of four. 

“I’m so sorry, Professor Lockhart,” she simpered as she returned to her seat, “but I couldn’t find Potter’s paper at all, nor those of two of her, um, friends.” Harriet heard a popping sound from behind her she’d learned from experience was either Crabbe or Goyle cracking their knuckles. The noise made Mandy jump and look obviously away from Harriet and those around her. Harriet did not so much as twitch. Mandy was an annoyance, to say the least, but so long as she stayed away then it didn’t matter. Talking about Harriet, though, depending on what she said, that was something Harriet might count as getting too close. 

“Quite all right, Miss, quite all right,” said Lockhart, already wandering away. “Now, with that little formality over with, I believe it’s time we start some instruction! Everyone, stand up, please, wands out, we’ll be practicing our dueling stances for the rest of the day!” There was an excited murmur as everyone began to stand, wands clenched in tiny fists. Harriet pulled her own cedar stick out from her front pocket, where she’d stuck it today, and stood up next to Draco. “Now, I’ll need a volunteer,” called Lockhart, to the nearly unanimous waving and hooting of Harriet’s classmates. Crabbe, Goyle, Draco, and herself were among the bare few who did not raise their hands. “Ah, yes, perfect, if Ms.Harriet Potter would come to the front, please? Carlsberg, get ready with that camera, now, we’ll need the perfect shot.” The last was said as an aside to the cameramen, both of which nodded. Harriet was confused. Firstly, she hadn’t volunteered. Secondly, were both of the cameramen named Carlsberg?

Harriet did not move. Rather she shot a look over to Draco. She did not want any part of whatever in the freezing frosts of hell was going on here. And if Lockhart got even remotely closer to her, she was going to be done. Absolutely done. Hopefully her friend would know how to deal with this…this…whatever it was. Draco, next to her, was apparently dealing by pouting horrendously, staring at Lockhart and the camera. When Harriet caught his eye, for a moment she saw a strange, cold sort of envy there. Then, Draco took in her face and blanched white. His face went slack for a moment before his eyes flickered to her braids, braids that were feeling quite toasty, and he audibly gulped. The weird boy looked like he was panicking for some reason. 

“Hurry along, now, Harriet, no need to be shy!” said the annoyance. Harriet raised an eyebrow at Draco in confusion and anger. She was not pleased to be so confused about so many things at once. Already she could feel herself heating up and emitting sparks beneath her skin. Where she was going blank and overheated, though, Draco was biting his lip and looking over at Crabbe and Goyle with scrunched eyebrows. Her young friend looked determined, now, rather than panicked, and so Harriet relaxed. She’d follow his lead, then. 

Draco took a deep breath and clenched his eyes shut. Then, to Harriet's surprise, he started screaming. “Ooow!” he screeched, slapping his palms over his nose and noisily falling over onto Crabbe and Goyle’s desk. One leg flipped upwards and knocked over his and Harriet's desk even as his falling body toppled Crabbe and Goyle's desk along with three out of their four chairs on the way down. Crabbe and Goyle immediately knelt down and Harriet watched, aghast, as behind the cover of hers and Draco’s overturned desk, Crabbe gabbed Draco’s nose and snapped it. Blood immediately gushed out and Draco’s screams took on a note of reality, even if they were still much louder than Harriet would have predicted. 

“He broke his nose yesterday, Professor, standing up must have reopened the wound!” Goyle yelled to the front of the classroom. Crabbe hoisted Draco upright and shoved him into Harriet’s arms. Harriet startled slightly, but grabbed Draco under the arms and clutched him to her chest. His blood was seeping into her shirt, but she could also feel Draco’s smirk against her collarbone. “Harriet’s supposed to take him to the hospital wing when this happens, Professor Snape said so.”

Lockhart frowned. “Are you certain? I think someone else can take care of Mr.Malfoy, it seems quite silly to interrupt Harriet’s education for such a small issue…” Lockhart trailed off as Draco whipped his head around to face him. He had his arms slung around Harriet’s neck, and as he looked over he tightened them until he was more clutching onto Harriet than she was clutching onto him. It felt very strange, having an entire human wrapped around her, especially when that human was leaking. 

“How dare you!” Draco snarled. “Harriet was selected for this duty due to medical reasons that you have no right to question! My father will be hearing of this. Come along, Harriet.” Harriet beamed and nodded against Draco’s chin. She briefly leaned down and grabbed hers and Draco’s bags before allowing Draco to lean back onto her shoulder. He swooned against her sturdy frame, drifting a hand over his face and groaning. His height made their positioning more of a balancing act than any sort of support of each other’s weight. “Oh, the agony!” he moaned as Harriet walked them out of the doorway, scot-free. 

As soon as they turned the first corner in the hallway, Draco straightened up and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Merlin!” he snapped. “That bloody hurt! You owe me big for this, Harriet. I mean homework, personal hygiene, public appearances, all of it!” Harriet smiled helplessly over to him. “Okay, come on, then, we’d best go to the Hospital Wing. I still can’t believe he bought that…”

“He seems very stupid,” Harriet agreed. “Thank you very much, Draco, for helping me to not burn him alive.” Walking at her side, Draco stumbled over his own feet for a step. 

“Okay, um, yes, well, I’m very happy to help with, er, that sort of thing as well. Can’t have you getting expelled… or imprisoned, I suppose. Ah, maybe for repayment I’ll just take some homework help for the week. No need to make a big deal of this. I mean, that is, your, er, your presence is of great benefit to me. As you know. Um.” Draco looked very uncomfortable. Harriet decided to take pity on him. Honestly, she wasn’t even capable of experiencing as many emotions as him and she still managed to be better at expressing them.

“You’re very helpful as well, Draco. I like when you give me things and I give you aid in return. Our deal is mutually beneficial. It makes me very, erm, warm.”

“Warm…” Draco murmured, “right.”


	23. The Elves's Monster

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harriet meets the zany supporting cast.

Professor Snape, who Harriet thought should really go by bastard and make everyone’s lives easier, had not changed a single bit this year. Nor had his classroom, his classes, or his hatred of Harriet. She was more convinced than ever of her assessment of Snape. He may be nominally human, but he was so empty, so cold, that all he retained within was stagnant water, still enough to cultivate a layer of grime and filth that only a stronger tide could hope to wash away. 

Personally, Harriet figured the human would have to die to be scoured clean. His wet muck was so systemic it spewed out over his skin and into his hair. He’d be lucky be set on fire at all, because Harriet sure wouldn’t dein to do it. Well, not unless he got too close.

Potions class this year had proved to be a loud, disruptive affair. For the other students it was probably fairly rote, quiet even, but Snape just really seemed to like yelling at her, so she found potions class to be much more similar to “doing chores” with Petunia. 

Honestly, Harriet wouldn’t have been surprised if Petunia and Snape were brother and sister for how similarly they acted. 

In this as every other potions class Harriet was seated next to Ernie. He was the only student without a human willing to partner with him, so he ended up with Harriet each time by default. He almost never spoke to her but he did speak with those around their desk, who all called him Ernie. Ernie’s communication with Harriet amounted to “pass the goat blood”.

“Ms.Potter.”

Harriet looked up. Snape was hovering over her with flaring nostrils and a thermometer. He’d taken to having it in class every day sometime in her second month at school. Ernie was hunching over away from her as he usually did during Snape’s visits.

“Tsk, tsk,” he said as he hovered the thermometer over her cauldrom flame. “Two degrees off, Ms.Potter. One would think you are either illiterate or unable to use a simple burner. Perhaps both?” From the front of the classroom came a series of girlish giggles. 

Harriet glowered down at the tiny bluish flame beneath her cauldron. According to the instructions and Snape’s thermometer readout, her flame was two degrees too hot. Harriet took a deep breath and tried to gently pull on the tiny flame as she breathed in behind the curtain of her left braid. After a moment, she rubbed her fingers together and sniffed the air.

“Are you certain, Professor?” she asked through gritted teeth. From out of her field of vision, the thermometer was jabbed back towards her flame. From the corner of her eye she caught the new readout. It was perfect.

“Entirely,” Snape snarled above her head in his deep, gargly voice as he jerked the thermometer back into his damp robe pocket. “Five points from Ravenclaw, Potter. I suppose one with your mental faculties would attempt to take credit for happenstance.” Harriet finally looked up at Snape and grinned. She didn’t say anything to that. She didn’t need to. Rather, she focused all of her attention to keeping the little flame exactly the same temperature while still pinning Snape with her best victory grin. Snape, as she watched, was twisting his lip ever further upwards as his entire face seemed to twitch under the force with which he ground his teeth.

One thing to be said for potions class. She had finally gotten a good grasp on human temperature measurement, and how to adhere to it. By next year, she was aiming to be even better than that damned thermometer. That, or get kicked out of the dungeons altogether.

Once she was finally finished with potions class, Harriet hustled out of the classroom and tried to ignore all of the elbows and hips jostling her about as she made her way into the hall. It was moments like these when she had trouble remembering why burning them all was a poor plan. With judicious use of her own pointy elbows and smaller stature, Harriet successfully reached the outer limits of the crowd and was free to trot off in the direction of the library.

One thing to be said for year two at Hogwarts. Her classes had become just that tiny bit more interesting after the summer break, asked just a bit more of her, and she adored it. 

In charms they had moved on to new forms of movement to impose upon an object, although they still practiced with small, light things that were difficult to damage. One boy, a Gryffindor, had a certain talent for setting his supplies on fire, although he was terribly inconsistent. Harriet had thought to mimic him, once, before deciding that she was in class to learn, not to practice what she was naturally perfect at already. His little explosions were short-lived and lacking in heat, anyways. More smoke than anything else. 

Harriet had, against her will, continued attending Defense Against the Dark Arts. Draco tended to drag her along with him, and although she grumbled and frowned she never actually stopped him. The reason was that, for all Lockhart taught in such an annoying, obtrusive way, the information was just as rich as most anything else around the castle. Sure, it was all fiction with strange demonstrations and fluttering around portraits of him accomplishing made-up feats, but entertainment was entertainment. Draco seemed to have adopted this attitude as well along the way, although she and he both refused to participate in the ‘skits’ Lockhart attempted to prompt them into. After seeing the first one, performed with Mandy and Faucet, where Lockhart called them devilish hags and pretended to stab them with a ruler, she’d decided that theater was very much made for the spectator and not the performer. So, whenever Lockhart requested she be some part in his odd teaching displays, Harriet pretended he wasn’t there, and figured that she was applying the acting skills he was attempting to impart by doing so. 

“I can’t believe you found the dunce’s one weakness. Who’d have thought he doesn’t know how to combat being ignored?” Draco leaned over to whisper to her one day during a rendition of Lockhart slaying a troll. Lisa was playing the troll. She really needed to grunt in a deeper tone. Lockhart flailed his arms about and thwacked off the Lisa-troll’s head, or at least that’s how he narrated his ruler-swish through the air a solid foot above Lisa’s human head. Considering the troll she’d killed last year, Harriet imparted to Draco her own opinion on the matter.

“If he’s going to write about killing a troll or fighting it or whatever, he should really, I don’t know, research how someone would do it in real life. It’s like he’s never seen so much as a picture of one!” Draco had snorted deeply into his fist, and the sound resonated so well that Lockhart mistakenly commended Lisa on finally embodying the true spirit of a troll’s grunting. Harriet, not for the first time, wondered if Lockhart was fully cognizant of his surroundings. 

Then, on the morning one week before Halloween, Harriet was forced to reconsider her own situational awareness when she woke up to the sounds of someone near her bed that was not one of her human dormmates, or human at all. 

“Here is where it lives.”

Harriet bolted upright from beneath her covers, sending a puff of ashes up into the air around her. The open window was letting sunlight stream through at a high enough angle to indicate Harriet was, well, late for class to say the least. The lack of human-noise supported her hypothesis. Whatever was speaking outside of the curtains closed around her domain did not sound even remotely human.

“Dobby thanks you muchly, but why, why isn’ts it clean?” squeaky voice number two responded to its companion, and Harriet looked down at the piles of ashes burying her feet and felt more than a flicker of suspicion that it was her they were speaking of.

“Hogwarts elves won’t go nears it. We known’t what it is, or what may happen if we take of its leavings. We keep the ashes away from students beds, and move the trunk at year’s beginning. We do nots speak to its, or touch its things, and we thinks you very foolish to try.” This squeaky voice was slower, rumblier, perhaps breathier? Harriet was quite fascinated, and their obvious respect for her space was endearing to say the least. So, Harriet leaned forward on silent feet and threw open her bedcurtains.

Harriet caught a glimpse of two smallish figures before, with a loud pop, one vanished entirely. The one remaining flinched away from Harriet, but stood its ground as Harriet took in this odd new species. It had bat-like ears, and bush-baby eyes, and elephant skin. It had a shrew’s nose and a human’s feet and hands. For clothing, it wore some sort of strange brownish sack with a silvery embroidered ‘M’ on the left breast. After a moment, the thing looked away to the wall towards Harriet’s left and bowed at the waist.

“You’re here for me. Why are you in a human-place, and why did you find my place?” The creature shuddered as Harriet spoke and backed away a few steps, eyes still avoiding Harriet’s own. 

“Dobby does not mean disrespect to anything that might be in the room with him. He is speaking only to himself, and making no requests or promises, no matter what else may happen to hear.” 

“Hmm,” Harriet hummed and flopped forward onto her belly. She propped up her chin on her palms and started her legs slowly kicking in the air at the knee. “What are you? Maybe, you’re more than one thing? Or maybe you’re half of something else. Or perhaps even both!” The Ravenclaw door-knocker had taught her a great love of word-games. Harriet scanned the Dobby thing once more, taking note of his shadow and the way his chest inflated on each breath and the way he had scabs all in lines across the tops and palms of his hands. Whatever he was, he was probably a living being.

“Dobby has heard no questions. He is a very good house elf, and he would n-never intrude against his master’s orders, no no no.” Dobby was shaking now, and his eyes seemed to waver over towards Harriet before he would jerk them away and lock his gaze back onto the bathroom door.

“A house elf,” Harriet mused, “that must obey his master’s orders. So, your master sent you here? Why? What’s your master?” Harriet lolled her head from side to side. Every time she moved, Dobby twitched and his hands would go up to his eyes and cover them for a moment. She jerked her head forward to see what he would do and he jumped back a foot away from her like she’d burned him.

“Dobby’s master would punish him even more if he knew Dobby was here.” Dobby frenetically waved his hands towards Harriet as he spoke. She couldn’t see his eyes with how he was twisted away from her, but she could see his ribs beneath his skin pumping like bellows. On his hands, the lines of scabs looked very regular and intentional. She didn’t miss that Dobby displayed them while talking about punishments from his master. “But Dobby hads to come, because something terrible is going to happen at Hogwarts. Dobby hoped the Girl-who-Lived could be safe, but the other elves, theys be telling Dobby that she isn’t here. But, maybe something else that lives here will do a thing to help? Dobby can’t help if something hears his mumbling, no, Dobby can’t be faultful for that. And Dobby can’t let bad things happen to the good wizards and witches, if, if he has any way to help. But this is all Dobby can do. He has failed.”

With that, the house elf vanished with nothing but a slight pop and a rush of diplaced air. Harriet beamed. Dobby was the second most interesting thing she’d seen this year!

Once she’d digested the encounter a little more, Harriet rolled herself out of bed and patted down her skirt. Her hair was still braided, but the top of her head was a bit frizzy and her bangs were twisted all over the place so Harriet shoved her feet into her little black shoes and trotted into the bathroom. The shoes’s unbuckled straps clinked against the wood every time she took a step, and so Harriet tried to take as tiny of steps as possible. 

Inside the bathroom Harriet grabbed her hairbrush and washcloth from her cubby and darted over to the mirror and sink. The sink still was unpleasant, to say the least, but after wiping her face every day she’d somewhat come to grips with the idea that the skin on her hands and head would keep out the dangerous water. 

When Harriet finished stripping away the layer of ash on her skin, she looked up and met her own eye in the mirror. The green was deep and impenetrable, and Harriet looked closer, leaning in to search for even the slightest glimmer of herself behind the pigmented muscle tissue of her iris. There had to be something if the house elves could tell she wasn’t human; maybe she was finally burning free of this body. 

Nothing shone through. Not really. She blinked. The body in the mirror moved in time with her command, instantaneous and obedient. But her light and heat remained just out of her reach. 

Fires did not control themselves. They consumed and raged and spread. Only now, trapped like this, Harriet had control over herself. What was she even meant to do with that?

The braids she kept so religiously untwisted themselves as soon as she removed the hairties. Her coal-black hair spun outwards and, lacking pressure and confinement, rose upwards on its own wave of hot air. The flickers of cherry-red embers could be glimpsed through the carapace of spun-coal that was her surreal hair. She could feel what it was, knew every millimeter of the strands which grew from her scalp, and she knew it was nothing like the cellular gunk of human hair. Yet, it shone like hair, and waved like hair, and fell like hair. No matter what Harriet did, whenever her hair was unbound she could not find the line which separated fire from human. 

The brush Hermione gave her had no hairs tangled into the bristles, despite repeated usage. They always burned away when removed. Harriet ran the brush through her hair and flattened her bangs down before she quickly tied the two braids back together and bound them in their strings once more. Now she looked perfectly human once again. 

Harriet met her eye, her green eye that took in light while letting none out, and blinked. 

She was not human.

And somehow, the house elves knew it. 

So did she.


	24. The Thief

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harriet does a solid for a mate.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm pulling my life together! I'm in and out of Doctor's appointments! I'm scheduling and packing for moving! I'm attending my classes! And, most of all, I'm sleeping! 
> 
> None of my stories are abandoned, they've just slowed down a little while I slow down a little.

There was a gap between two bookshelves, shielded by a table, beneath a window and alcove. Harriet and her books could fit, perhaps even with room for several people as well. She’d just found it today. There were cobwebs and spider webs, dust and spiders, and Harriet had taken that as an open invitation. Cleaning up had only taken moments. In her wake, a few spiders had managed to flee beneath the shelves, but otherwise she’d eaten away that mess to ash.

The floorstones were a bit soot-darkened, but she quite liked that. This place belonged to her, now.

Today Harriet was reading a book about history. The book made a distinction, between muggle and magical history, and enforced it by not writing down anything about the muggle history. Harriet thought that was rather stupid. 

In the book, there was a war of attrition. Harriet didn’t quite know what that meant, and she’d have to look it up or ask Hermione. What she did gather was that there was a sort of border, an edge past which magical humans could not go further, or if they could it was very difficult and they could never come back. This border was, naturally, the shores of the British Isles. The author was not concerned, much, with why no one could cross to the mainland. Only one thing was mentioned in passing. The boats that tried to cross all sank. 

Harriet took “all” to mean muggle ships as well. 

The war went on, and many magical lives were lost, not just to battle, often not to battle. To starvation. To which Harriet could only wonder where all the food had gone. 

After all, magicals and muggles eat the same things. So, if one was starving, either the other one wasn’t and that was interesting, or they both were and the author didn’t care, and that was also interesting. 

There was a whisper, like someone talking from far away. At first, Harriet did not understand why this whisper was catching her attention so harshly. Then the whisper got closer, and Harriet realized that the call was of her name.

“Harriet!”

Also, the whisper sounded like Hermione.

“Over here!” she called back. Immediately, the whispers cut off and Harriet caught the sound of footsteps.

Hermione came round the corner, and for a moment did not see Harriet. Rather, she looked around the shelves with a frown etched over her face. Turning about, she eventually managed to spot Harriet, tucked away in her corner. Upon meeting Harriet’s eye, her frown split into a beaming grin. Hermione waved a relaxed hand, and Harriet realized she, too, was smiling.

“Hermione!” she chirped. Hermione continued smiling, taking her time to creep between the two bookshelves around Harriet. The girl had to step up and over books Harriet had dragged in and stacked. As a result, Hermione ended up slowly rotating twice on her axis before she reached Harriet and was able to slide down the wall and sit alongside her. She seemed glad for the seat cushions Harriet had brought in. Her pillow and Harriet’s nearly touched in the small space, and so it was inevitable that their feet ended up knocking together. Hermione frowned lightly and playfully knocked her shiny buckle-black shoes against Harriet’s be-socked feet. 

“Should I even ask where they went this time?” she asked. Harriet grinned and shrugged. Hermione did not need to know that Harriet had left her shoes beneath her own pillow. She didn’t want Hermione to see them, just yet. This morning she’d gotten distracted while reading and taken a nibble out of them. They were still wearable, but the strap and inner edge of her left shoe were completely gone.

Hermione sighed and rolled her eyes, which Harriet found infinitely more agreeable when it was accompanied by an amused little smirk. “I suppose it’s alright to take them off in here,” said Hermione. “It seems pretty clean. Although, Harriet, someone else likely uses it regularly if it’s so nice, we’ll have to be prepared to move.”

Harriet shook her head. “I cleaned it. It was full of spider webs and dust.”

“You cleaned it?” Hermione’s eyebrows shot upwards. “That was quite nice of you, Harriet. I must admit, I wouldn’t have expected you to pay much mind to cleanliness.”

“I’m very clean!” said Harriet, straightening her spine. Hermione’s smirk grew. “I keep my bed spotless, and I always braid my hair nicely.”

Hermione actually snorted. Harriet couldn’t keep herself from pouting. “Harriet, not that it’s any of my business, but the Patil sisters do talk, and I’ve not exactly heard good things about your bed.” Harriet’s pout grew. Giggling behind her hair, Hermione ignored her and reached for the nearest book. “Your braids are lovely, though,” she said thoughtfully, eyeing Harriet’s hair where it laid over her shoulders. Harriet lost her pout to an appreciative grin. 

“Yeah well, it’s not their bed, it’s mine,” she said to Hermione’s raised eyebrow. Harriet’s own book was open in her lap, and as Hermione started eyeing her own book Harriet started fingering the corner of the page where she’d left off. “And you know Patil is weird. All my dormmates are weird. They said that we can’t be friends because I don’t ‘make my bed’. But I didn’t want to be friends with them in the first place!”

“My dormmates don’t like me much, either, and the feeling is mutual,” Hermione shrugged. “But I can only assume that it’s much harder for you.” Harriet did not understand, and tilted her head. Hermione was very good at understanding Harriet without Harriet needing words. In this case, Hermione flushed and bit her lip before averting her eyes. “You know, because you’re just different! Different from anyone, really. It’s a good thing!”

“Hmm,” said Harriet. She was different, and it was the best thing. Humans were really very gross. “It is good.” Harriet nodded once. Hermione visibly relaxed. “Have you ever been on a boat?” she went on. 

“Huh?” Hermione muttered. At first, she was frozen in a mien of confusion. Then she shook herself, her hair swishing around her. It was getting longer. “Yes, actually. My mum and dad and I, um, we went on a cruise a few years back. It wasn’t much fun, seeing as it was for a dentistry conference, but I liked being out on the water. Mostly I spent that day reading the emergency procedure manuals. Why do you ask? I thought you were, erm, uncomfortable with water?”

Harriet nodded and stuck out her tongue. “Bleh.”

Hermione smile-sighed and touched a hand to her own cheek. “I take it that a cruise is not your ideal vacation, then?”

“Vacation…” Harriet mused. “I don’t want to go on vacation. I just want to stay here at Hogwarts all the time.”

“Me, too, sometimes,” said Hermione in a half-whisper. “That’s not the point, though, don’t you want to travel? See the world? Learn everything you possibly can?”

“Yes.” Harriet shrugged once then grinned and knocked her foot against Hermione’s. “Just not on a boat!” Hermione laughed, and Harriet felt warm up for the accomplishment. 

“You know,” Hermione went on, “most larger boats are quite safe, these days. According to statistics, you are much more likely to die due to automobile accident than most anything else.” She was looking challengingly at Harriet with her arms crossed over her book. Harriet raised an eyebrow and leaned forward slightly. Hermione’s smirk grew. 

“According to statistics, there’s a zero percent chance of me dying on a boat if I never get on a boat.”

“Well, you wouldn’t technically die on the boat if it sunk…” said Hermione, before looking at whatever expression Harriet was making and collapsing into deep, long belly-laughs. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she choked out, “don’t give me that look!” 

“Mione?”

The voice around the corner came as a surprise to both Harriet and Hermione, who snapped around to look at the entrance to their little alcove. Hermione caught Harriet’s eye and gave her a questioning look. Harriet, generally unsure of what Hermione was asking, shrugged. She was fairly certain that, whatever the outcome, she could handle it. 

“Over here, Ron!” Hermione called. She and Hermione, then, sat back against their opposite shelves. Harriet was relaxed, now, knowing that the approaching steps belonged to Ron. Indeed, the taller red-head quickly rounded the corner and, taking in their new hidey-hole, crept in and sat heavily with his back to the entrance. Hermione frowned over at him leaned over. “Ronald, what’s wrong?”

“Ugh,” Ron replied. His head was hanging down on his shoulders like a boulder. “It’s my wand,” he moaned, and Hermione immediately leaned up onto her knees to scoot closer to the despondent boy. Then, Ron held up his wand and Harriet hissed between her teeth in near concert with Hermione. Ron nodded grimly. 

Ron’s wand was snapped in the middle with only two splinters, one on each half, tenuously clinging together by a string of wood. The top half was swaying gently from the fallible hold of Ron’s flesh-and-blood arm. 

“Oh, Ronald,” Hermione groaned. “What happened?”

Ron shrugged helplessly. “Pulled it out of my bag like this, didn’ I? It was a hand-me-down from my brother Charlie, so I guess it’s a miracle it lasted this long.” Frowning deeply, Ron brought the broken wand up to his face and scowled at it. His eyes nearly crossed.

“You’ll have to get a new one, then,” Hermione said with a firm nod. “I’m sure McGonagall will understand, and she can arrange for you to meet your parents at Ollivanders. Or perhaps here.”

For a long moment, Ron stared at Hermione with a blank face. Harriet cringed back and grabbed a braid to fiddle with. “Hermione,” Ron said, empty and stone-faced.

“Hmm?” said Hermione. She was no longer looking at him, rummaging through her bag for some reason or another. Harriet rather envied her for her ignorance, in that moment. Non-humans really never had to luxury of being unaware when humans were pissed.

“It's not that easy, is it?” Ron snapped. Hermione yanked herself out of her bag and whipped around to stare at Ron with tense shoulders and a glare. Harriet was not so mild in her reaction. Remembering her various encounters with Vernon, Harriet dove for the ground and tensed her legs against the wall behind her, ready at any moment to lunge forward and flee from this bottle neck she’d so naively created. 

By the time she looked back up, Hermione and Ron were both staring at her. Neither moved. 

“Ronald?” Hermione mildly asked. Neither she nor Ron looked away from Harriet, but both slowly relaxed back into their seats. In turn, Harriet sat up in her own. 

“Er,” Ron mumbled. He’d dropped his wand bits, at some point, and so was running a freckled hand through his hair. The skin of his face was rapidly coloring to match said hair. “Sorry ‘bout that, Harriet. I’m not mad, really. And, um,” he glanced over at Hermione, who was biting her lip. “I’m just a bit frustrated is all, mate!” he finished with a crooked smile over at Harriet.

“Because of your wand,” Harriet finished. “What are you going to do?”

Ron sighed heavily, flopping back over in his seat. “Dunno, do I? My family really can’t afford a new one. Especially since Ginny just started school. Think I can fix it?”

Hermione shook her head, and began telling Ron about the various threats to life and limb inherent to a broken wand, but Harriet was thinking. The issue, it seemed to her, was simply that Ron needed a wand that wasn’t broken but that didn’t cost money. 

She had one of those!

Rummaging through her bag, Harriet made a noise of triumph when she emerged with the wand she’d won in her duel last year. Honestly, she’d forgotten it until now in the depths of her bag. 

“I’ll trade you!” she announced, holding the wand out to brandish handle first at Ron. “Your wand pieces for this one.” After all, it made no difference to her in burning something if it was in pieces first. 

Ron and Hermione both stared at the wand for a moment, mouths gaping. “Harriet,” Hermione croaked, “you can’t just give Ron your own-“ then cut herself off with a defeated look. “That’s not your wand.”

“Nope,” Harriet answered. Her own wand was much paler, and did not have any sort of carved handle like this wand.

Ron’s shoulders were trembling, and he had a hand clamped over his mouth. Hermione was pinching the bridge of her nose. “Whose wand is that, Harriet?” she asked.

“Mine, now,” said Harriet. Hermione sighed and Ron made a strangled noise in his throat.

“Oh, shut up, Ron!” Hermione finally snapped. Ron lost the hand at once and roared with laughter. 

“Merlin’s beard, Harriet!” Ron chortled. “I don’t know what poor bloke you took that from, but if you can promise me that he won’t be after my head, then you’ve got yourself a deal!”

“Ronald!” Hermione hissed. 

“What, Hermione?” he shrugged. “She’d got an extra, and it’s not like she paid for it!”

“True,” Harriet said, nodding and brandishing the wand. Hermione’s teeth were making a near-audible noise as they ground together.

“It’s stolen, Ronald!” she snarled. “She needs to return it!”

“I didn’t steal it!” Harriet yelped. “I never steal. I won this.”

“See, Mione?” Ron said, finally calming down. “Have some faith, Harriet wouldn’t just steal someone’s wand.”

Hermione looked conflicted between the two of them, then slumped and threw up her hands. “Fine!” she said. “I’m sorry, Harriet, for thinking the wand you’ve got, the wand no one in their right mind would give up, was taken without permission. Quite silly of me.”

Ron sighed. Harriet, still a bit confused, smiled. “Thanks, Hermione,” she said sincerely. Stealing was so against her nature that she felt a bit odd at the idea Hermione would think it of her. “I wouldn’t ever want you to think me as a thief. Stealing is the most wrong thing I can think of, really.”

Hermione sat still in her seat as Ron slowly turned his head to stare at her. “Yeah, Hermione,” he said flatly. “Quite nice of you, how much you trust your best friend.” 

For a long moment, none of them spoke. Then Hermione turned to Ron and squared her shoulders. “Yes, you’re right, Ronald. Harriet has certainly earned, er, that much.” Then, her lip quirked up in a half smile and she muttered, “I won’t forget.” 

Ron raked his hand through his hair again and smiled. “Yeah, I know you won’t,” he said. “Although, if you were to, I’d totally get it. I mean, she’s got some random bloke’s wand banging around in her bag, for Merlin’s sake!”

“Exactly!” Hermione chopped one hand through the air and Ron snorted. Harriet was starting to think that, maybe, her humans were stuck in some sort of loop. Their conversation was just going in obvious circles for no apparent reason. It was painfully boring. 

“Are we trading or not!” she stepped in. Ron and Hermione turned to her and both were smiling, seeming amused but also much calmer. 

“You sure, Harriet?” Ron asked. “I’m not sure what you wanted an extra wand for in the first place, but this one is beyond hope, I’m thinking.”

“Yes, yes,” she huffed, wiggling the extra wand in one hand and an empty palm alongside. “You need a wand, and I need the wand pieces. Fair’s fair.”

“Alrigh’” Ron shrugged, then placed the wand bits in her empty hand and took his new wand into his own. The red and gold sparks that spewed from the tip had both him and Hermione jerking back. “Woah!” he yelped. Hermione’s eyebrows were raised, taking in Ron and his wand clasped evenly in his fist. Harriet beamed.

“Ronald, is it alright?” Hermione asked. Ron stared at the wand in his hand for a moment, then his whole face lit up as he grinned so wide and happy that Harriet could count his molars.

“Alright?” he asked incredulously. “It’s better! It’s, it’s perfect! This feels, it feels like…” He trailed off, helplessly staring at his wand. 

“Like part of you,” Harriet finished for him. As she spoke, she took her own wand into her hand at her side. Over a year later, and still the feeling of empty sky filling with her heat and light struck her like the feeling of a hearth, of a lick of flame alike to any other within her.

“Yeah,” Ron sighed happily. “I can’t believe the luck. Whoever you got this from, it must not have chosen him or anybody.”

“The odds alone,” Hermione muttered. 

Harriet shrugged. She didn’t think odds had anything to do with it. The chance of her dying on a boat was zero, because she’d never be on one. The chance of the wand liking Ron was absolute, because he’d given up something of his own in trade for it. Something with, apparently, quite some sentimental value from the taste of the deal. Ron must really love his brother Charlie, Harriet decided, licking her lips. Otherwise she might’ve asked for a bit more from Ron.


	25. The Crush

Far above her, the midday sky quivered from its perch upon the stone walls of the Great Hall. The clouds were grey and ripe, seeming to sag inwards towards the five long tables below, and to Harriet herself as well. Many a time, this year and last, the clouds would open and it would begin to rain. The temperature never fell, and the drops never fell, and it was during these mealtimes that Harriet would make an exception to her preference towards solitary dining in abandoned classrooms. Dry woods and quiet were easily attained, in Hogwarts. But, so too were they easily attained at the Dursleys and, likely, in most human places. 

Harriet wasn’t a creature of the nature to consider what her life would bring. Still, whatever consideration she did hold always seemed to flicker through her on days when it rained in the Great Hall. On rainy days, the fleeting impulse to savor her circumstances would strike. On rainy days, Harriet would think to herself that this was likely the closest she’d ever get to harmlessly sitting beneath a storm. So, she would sit, and eat, and stare up at the false sky. Some days, when the rain was harshest and it seemed that the darkened drops vanished mere inches from her nose, she imagined that this invulnerability was how it felt like to be human. 

None of this was to say that she felt fear, towards real rain or at all. That would imply that her desire to live stemmed from a fear of death. Now that was the sort of nonsensical humanity that Harriet could not imagine, not even while wearing her human skin beneath an illusory storm. 

To her left at the table, Ron was eating almost as quickly as she was, an impressive feat in itself, while also arguing with Hermione, an impressive combination that Harriet had never yet managed. She avoided letting humans see inside her mouth while she ate. Just in case. Ron obviously had no such qualms. 

“I’m just saying, Mione,” Ron mumbled through a mouthful of baked potato, “the man’s obviously a phony! I don’t get why you’re still on his side.”

Hermione, sitting across from them both, crossed her arms and huffed. She was glaring daggers over at Ron, lip twisted upwards in a snarl. She appeared to be readying to verbally tear into Ron, only to stop and stare across the Great Hall. Every ounce of anger was replaced with curiosity, slightly fearful curiosity, as she turned to Harriet and asked, “Harriet, who’s that over there, staring at you? By the doors.”

Peering over, Harriet scanned the entryway until she locked eyes with a taller young man, dark haired and with a green tie. He did, indeed, appear to be staring at her, but once their eyes met he only held her gaze for a moment, grimacing and clenching his jaw so hard Harriet could see the twitch in his cheek from across the hall. The older boy wrenched his entire face away as Harriet watched, then turned and stomped out of the Great Hall without a glance back. 

“No idea,” Harriet said into the silence behind her. Before she could turn back around, however, a boy only slightly larger than her bounced into her line of sight, clutching a camera and beaming at her.

“H-Harry Potter!” he warbled, rocking up and down on his toes where he hovered over her. Alarmed, Harriet glanced at Hermione, taking in her raised eyebrow and slight scowl. Then the boy’s words registered and Harriet, too, began to scowl. 

“It’s Harriet,” she deadpanned.

“Eh?” the boy’s face froze in an admittedly comical half scared, half elated state.

“I’m not Harry, I’m Harriet.”

“Oh,” the boy went on, running a nervous hand over the top of his camera. “Um, well, I’m Colin! Creevey, that is, but you can call me Colin, or Creevey, or whatever you’d like, um.” The fiddling with his camera grew more frantic, and Harriet leaned away in her seat, towards Ron. She heard him snort, and made sure to thrust an elbow back towards him in revenge. “I, I was wondering if maybe, er, I could get your autograph? And a photo! Oh, but first, I meant to ask, can I see your scar? The one on your forehead, I mean.”

“Ooh, giving out autographs now, Potter? Careful, if your head gets any bigger you won’t be able to reach your baby pigtails.” The commentary, coming from a group of slightly older girls seated nearby, was blatantly irrelevant and near divorced from reality. Despite this, for some reason Hermione still hissed at them to shut up, and at her back Ron, too, growled out some quiet insults. Harriet decided quickly that she could only deal with so many incomprehensible matters at a time, and so focused on Creevey and his question. 

“I don’t have an autograph.” Across the table, Hermione snorted.

“He means he’d like you to sign something, Harriet,” Ron said, monotone yet bemused. Harriet twisted in her seat to face him. Ron’s teeth were clenched, his eyes flinty, but when he looked at her, he simply appeared amused and something else. That ‘something else’ reminded Harriet of how Ron sometimes looked at Hermione. Shrugging, Ron quirked his head and went on. “Just a piece of paper, for him to say he’s got it.”

Slowly, Harriet turned away from Ron’s patient regard back to the vibrating blonde standing before her. “Why?” she asked.

“Oh, um, well,” Creevey blushed blotchily under his fair complexion. “It’s, you’re a hero, you know? Like, a real celebrity that goes to school with me and everything! They say you’re a super powerful witch and really kind and heroic and stuff, so I just knew I had to meet you. I, um,” Creevey paused to fiddle with his red tie. “I tried really hard to get into Ravenclaw like you, but the hat said I was better suited for Gryffindor instead. I’m real sorry.”

By now, the air was so awkward that even Harriet could feel it. At her side, Ron’s teeth grinding had increased, but so too had his shifting of weight towards the side of Harriet closer to Creevey. Indeed, he seemed to be glaring at the camera boy. Across the table, Hermione was looking desperately around herself, occasionally looking back at Ron and Harriet and wiggling an auspicious eyebrow. Harriet got the sense that Hermione wanted her to do something. Each time Harriet failed to do said something, Hermione’s blatant exasperation grew. Then, Hermione spotted something behind Creevey and her face lit up with relief. 

“Sir Nicholas!” came the welcome interruption from Hermione, who was half standing in her seat to wave down the spectral form of an older man, one who seemed to know her based on his polite but genuine smile. “Please! Come, er, tell us about your Halloween plans!” As soon as he approached, Hermione whipped around back to Colin and grimaced. “It was, er, nice to meet you Creevey. Have a nice rest of your day.”

“Oh, um-“

“Yeah, anyways, we’d best catch up with Ol’ Nick here, alrigh’? Nice to meet you, kid.” Ron had, apparently, understood Hermione’s subtle signaling, and was now grinning viciously and waving Creevey away. “Pillock,” he mumbled, then, under his breath, so quiet only Harriet seemed meant to hear. 

“Well, um, bye, Harriet,” said Creevey. Up to his side, the drifting, see-through man came to a stop. He was absolutely fascinating, as to Harriet’s senses he was completely nonexistent. Only to her human senses did he appear at all, and only by focusing on these human senses could she gain the slightest sense of being near a wisp of smoke. 

“Bye,” she absently replied, already leaning forward to sniff the spectral ‘Sir Nicholas’. He had no smell! None at all. From the corner of her eye, she noted Creevey departing. 

“Hello, Ms.Granger, Mr.Weasley,” Sir Nicholas grandly answered, sweeping off his cap. The feather upon it came so close to Harriet’s nose that she snapped at it instinctively. Her teeth closed on nothing but dead air. Literally dead, the air she captured lacked anything she could use to burn, be it heat or oxygen or otherwise. Harriet licked her lips, watching Sir Nicholas whip his hat back towards himself in a full-body flinch away from her. “My Goodness!” he yelped, but Harriet frowned as his eyes slid over her, not catching upon her face as she was so used to most lifeforms doing. Instead, his see-through grey eyes flicked between Ron and Hermione as he tipped his hat back upon his head. “That was certainly odd, my apologies.”

“Oh,” Hermione said tightly, “no, we apologize, of course, right Harriet?”

“Sorry,” Harriet dutifully stated. Sir Nicholas looked confused, and his head tilted slightly toward her, as though searching for a muffled sound. 

“Quite all right, quite all right,” Sir Nicholas finally said. “What were we speaking about? Oh! Yes, my Halloween plans. Well, it is very kind of you to ask, as Halloween is the date of my annual Deathday Party. It is, naturally, the party of the year,” he chortled. Ron weakly joined in. “Ghosts from all around Scotland come to celebrate, and to visit the castle and our various deceased tenants. In fact, this year, the Headless Horsemen’s Club will be attending, in response to my most recent application!” He looked terribly proud of this, puffing up his chest and tucking his hands behind his back. 

“But, aren’t you only nearly headless?” Ron blurted. Sir Nicholas’s face immediately darkened. 

“A mere sliver, I think, of connective tissue should not negate the shared experience we departed men have of the executioner’s blade!” he intoned. Harriet was now staring avidly at his neck, and indeed she could see as he spoke more and more animatedly the edge of some clean, bloodless slice poked out from beneath a massive ruff of stiff fabric. 

“Can we come? To your Deathday Party?” Harriet asked. She hadn’t planned on asking, per se, but by now she was terribly curious about all of the ghosts which may be in attendance, their various deaths, and, too, what a Deathday celebration may look like. Her inquisitive impulses hadn’t failed her so far. 

“Hmm?” Sir Nicholas hummed, again looking confused and slightly concerned. “Er, that is, anyone who wishes to attend may do so. Especially yourself, Ms.Granger,” he nodded to Hermione, and his head wobbled dangerously. “We shall commence in the westward facing dungeons, tomorrow evening at 7:00 sharp. I do hope to see you and your friends in attendance.” With that, Sir Nicholas spun on his heel, a solid foot above the ground, and then tucked said feet upwards as he drifted away.

“That,” Ron slowly spoke, “was weird.”

“Maybe there are other places we could eat lunch,” Hermione said, drooping in her seat with an aura of resigned exhaustion. 

Harriet nodded. Obviously, she already had a secondary location to eat her lunch at. She was nodding more in acknowledgment that she’d likely be making use of it more often after today. Although, there had been some benefits, of eating in the Great Hall. Speaking of which, “We’re going to go, right? To the Deathday Party.”

The answering glint in Hermione’s eyes was a perfect match to Harriet’s. Ron’s answering groan was simply background music.   
*****  
Harriet was delighted. Here in the dungeons, it turned out there was an entirely separate feast with almost as much food, and no one was eating it! All of it was available for Harriet’s taking. Not to mention, many of the dishes on the table were blackened or oily or fuzzy in such a way that was beyond enticing. Oh, this was Harriet’s best Halloween yet.

If only Hermione would stop yanking Harriet away from the table!

“Do not!” Hermione barked, yanking on Harriet’s wrist with her entire body weight. “Do not eat that! Do not eat anything! Ronald, help me!”

Almost louder than Hermione, was the sound of Ron guffawing somewhere off to the side.

**Author's Note:**

> Ashes are so soft. Like feathers.


End file.
